A year after its 24-hour King Street store was refused, McDonald’s is fitting out the old Oporto on Enmore Road. This time no council had to sign off.
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What Happened
McDonald’s has started fitting out the former Oporto at 1-11 Enmore Road, about 500 metres from the King Street site it has been pursuing since last year. On 21 September, four days after McDonald’s applied, a private certifier approved the almost $1.3 million fit-out with a complying development certificate (CDC). Work started on 25 September, and the store is due to open later this year, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: BeauGiles / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Cropped and resized.
How It Got Through
A CDC is a fast-track approval for work that meets a fixed set of state rules. It can be issued by a private certifier instead of the council, and it isn’t exhibited for public comment, so there’s no chance to object.
King Street was different. Turning a former real estate agency and clothing shop into a takeaway needed a full development application, and McDonald’s also wanted to open there 24 hours a day. On Enmore Road, one takeaway is replacing another, so the work could go through as complying development. The certificate covers the internal fit-out only, with seating for 20 or fewer.
McDonald’s had been working on Enmore Road since at least March. The certificate lists a planning report on the CDC dated 26 March, two weeks before the City of Sydney’s panel rejected its second attempt at King Street.
It isn’t the first time McDonald’s has taken this route in the Inner West. Its Marrickville Road store was approved through a CDC in August 2025 and opened over summer.
Why King Street Was Refused
McDonald’s lodged plans for 212-214 King Street in July 2025. That side of King Street is in the City of Sydney, which received more than 1,400 submissions on the plan, most of them objections.
The City’s Local Planning Panel refused it in October 2025. Its reasons included:
24-hour trading: the City’s rules give a takeaway on that stretch of King Street base hours of 7am to 11pm, with later trading possible on a trial basis.
The footpath: delivery riders and stock deliveries would have relied on the footpath and an on-street loading zone, with no on-site bike parking or loading.
Safety: concerns raised by NSW Police hadn’t been addressed.
In January, McDonald’s asked the City to review the decision, cutting the hours to 7am to 11pm Sunday to Thursday and 7am to 2am on Fridays and Saturdays. The City’s planners said those hours met its rules, but the panel unanimously refused the review in April, again citing the footpath, deliveries and the lack of loading space.
McDonald’s then took the City of Sydney to the Land and Environment Court, but abandoned the case in September, the Herald reported. It’s also appealing the City’s refusal of a separate store on Redfern Street, Redfern. That case was listed for a hearing in late September, and no judgment has been published yet.
Will It Be Open 24 Hours?
Probably not, but it could trade until 4am.
Swapping one takeaway for another doesn’t change the hours a site is approved to trade, and the new certificate doesn’t set any. Inner West Council’s online records show the old Oporto’s approval was changed in 2000 to allow trading from 7am to 4am every day, including public holidays. The approval documents themselves aren’t online, so we haven’t been able to check the full conditions. If that approval still stands, it carries over to McDonald’s.
That’s two hours later than McDonald’s asked for on King Street on Fridays and Saturdays, and five hours later on other nights. To trade around the clock, McDonald’s would need to apply to Inner West Council, and that application would be assessed by Council rather than a private certifier.
Where People Stand
McDonald’s told the Herald the store was approved because it met all the relevant rules, and called it a multimillion-dollar investment that would create more than 130 jobs for construction workers and restaurant staff. Inner West Greens councillor Liz Atkins said McDonald’s was “getting a foothold in the area after previous experiences of community backlash in Newtown and Marrickville”.
We’ll keep you posted as we hear more.
