Council puts forward proposal to close town an hour earlier

Palmy town was already shit enough. Now this?

The Palmerston North City Council has proposed a closing time of 2am instead of 3am for clubs and bars in the CBD. This controversial proposal has prompted a flurry of opposing views from students and young people. 

One student says that the decision “sucks. It just feels like the Council is getting more and more anti-student. We don’t have the biggest town life, but what we lack in bars, we make up for our ability to go hard.” Another student, Gia, states that she would be “totally on board” with the earlier closing time. She sees the current 3am timeline as ‘unnecessary’ and doesn’t think students need any more temptation to stay out and excessively drink.  

Massive also talked to nightclub bartender Olivia, who believed that closing at 2am would encourage people to “go home and drink more, because it would still be considered early”. Through bartending experience, she has noticed that people don’t tend to come into the clubs early unless there is a happy hour special. This means that a 2am close wouldn’t likely prompt people to arrive to town any earlier than they do now.  

A Council spokesperson said, “Council staff are rewriting the draft local alcohol policy, and that will take some months, and then we’ll call for public submissions.” 

A Manawatū Standard article covering the plan states the proposed 2am closing time is going through its fourth round of consultation. However, MUSA President Fatima Imran says that when she spoke to the Council, they told her: “This case happened last year and the consultation period closed in Dec 2020.”  

This suggests there may be a miscommunication within the Council about what is happening with the proposition. It is unclear whether or not MUSA as an organisation will encourage the students at the Manawatū Campus to make public submissions. 

If you are a student or young person in Palmerston North who is unhappy with town potentially being closed an hour earlier, be sure to keep an eye on the Council news in the next couple of months for the opening of public submissions. The student culture within Palmy has the ability to influence the Council’s decision greatly.