The StationEmbattled Sunshine Coast music venue The Station has announced it’s closure with the final show happening on January 2 with Pete Murray.
The beloved venue has struggled since opening in November 2020 as Nightquarter, relocating from the Gold Coast with a mix of street food, markets and live music. The venue closed two years later in 2022, blaming the liquidation on pandemic shutdowns and extreme weather events.
Current lessors, local businesspeople Chris and Lauren Hignett re-opened the venue as The Station in 2022. The pair previously owned retailer Scooter and Skate at Birtinya, taking over the precinct which is owned by developers Stockland, creating The Station along with Alley Oops skate park. The redevelopment reportedly cost over $1 million. The skate part and retail operation was closed in October 2024, while the pair battled on with the live music venue.
Despite the business issues, the venue became a beloved part of the Sunshine Coast community, providing a key venue which enabled more touring artists to visit the region. In their closure announcement, the venue says that most shows have been re-booked at other Sunshine Coast venues.
Rumours of the venue’s closure have been circling the industry for months, with The Music approached by former employees regarding the health of the venue and the status of owed employee entitleents including superannuation.
In a statement to The Music, Chris Hignett said:
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"Lauren and I take our liabilities seriously and will be spending the next few weeks and months with our accountants to work through how we meet these obligations in full. We want to thank our community for the hundreds of messages of support. Live music is an important part of communities and it needs support from all of us to ensure it continues."
While the venue’s finances have been strained, what isn’t in question is the original intent of the owners and the goodwill of the community, with the stark reality of running a live music venue in full focus. In their closure announcement, Hignett said that the state of the industry means that gigs are at around 50% of what is needed to continue as a viable business.
In an October Reddit thread addressing the venues’ future Hignett said:
“This year started great but has since declined into a lack of quality shows touring and low ticket sales (this is being seen everywhere in venues; its been a horrible 6 months). Spend per head is down by as much as a third, whilst like your costs of living ours continue to increase as well.
“For The Station to break even it needs to generate $2.5million in revenues a year. Thats around 80,000 guests per year through the doors. This year we will be around 60,000. So yep still a loss but half of last years’. So for those counting along at home, yep, we are over $2 million in investment and yet to actually pay ourselves a cent. We have sold our family home, we are renting and we are working 7 days a week. If it was about a money grab, trust me this ain't the business to be in.”
The closure has opened a bigger discussion around the viability of medium-sized live music venues, the ability of venues to source enough artists that can sell tickets and the support of councils and governments to address the structural problems in live music.
No doubt as the live music industry enters 2026, there is increased soul searching around why Australia is not producing more live acts that can sell headline shows, why acts that can aren’t looking to the regions for shows and how the metrics of venues can survive in a cost of living crisis. As one commenter on social media who has previously been critical of The Station’s practices said after the collapse of Nightquarter and now The Station:
“I’m angry because I spent too long punching down instead of looking up. I’m angry because we’ve now lost two major venues and everyone with real power gets to stay clean. And I’m angry because I don’t believe this will be the last one.”
“No neat ending. No solutions here. Just the sinking feeling that we’ll be back on Reddit in a few years, talking about the next venue that “just couldn’t make it,” while the same landlord still owns the land and the same leaders act surprised.”
This story has been amended to include a statement from venue owner Chris Hignett.
