By ANNA USHER

Peter Lanigan still wants to put a troll under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The publican has lodged fresh plans for The Troll, a small bar in a vacant shopfront at 14 Ennis Road, Milsons Point, less than a year after North Sydney Council knocked his first bid back.

The name is the joke. In folklore, the troll is the creature that lurks under a bridge. Lanigan wants his to live under the most famous bridge of all.

Heritage sank him the first time. Last August the council ruled the troll-themed bar out of character with a national icon, and said the plans did not give it enough to judge the impact on the bridge.

This time, Lanigan has done his homework.

The new bid lands with a heritage report, an acoustic study, a plan of management and a waste plan, the very detail the council said was missing.

Conservation architect Dr Scott Robertson found the $45,000 fit-out would have “no detrimental heritage impacts” on the bridge, because every change sits inside the shop.

Better still, he says, the work would repair the original 1932 plaster ceiling and clear out decades of clutter, from cupboards bolted above the shopfront to a dead air-conditioner.

For all that heritage care, the planning papers are still dotted with pictures of trolls.

And what a spot it is. Number 14 Ennis Road is not just near the bridge. It is the bridge.

The shop is Bay 12, one of a row built into the bridge’s northern approach. Trams once ran along the top, onto the deck, until the tracks were lifted in 1958.

It even sits between the two men who built the bridge. Ennis Road, out the front, honours Lawrence Ennis, who ran the construction. Bradfield Highway, at the back, carries the name of chief engineer John Bradfield.

When the bridge opened in 1932, the shop sold fish and oysters as “The Pacific.” A few doors down stood Caldwell’s Wines and a post office. So a drink under the bridge is nothing new. A wine shop traded here from the start.

Since then it has been a newsagency, a Thai massage centre and a children’s tuition centre. It has sat empty since 2023.

The landlord is the government. Transport for NSW owns the bridge and its shops, and it is the one rebuilding the shopfront, after a car recently drove clean through it into the empty shop.

The bar itself would be small and dark. Up to 75 people across 57 square metres, with green wallpaper, chandeliers and leather lounges.

It would pour craft cocktails, local wine and premium spirits, with cheese boards but no kitchen. Trading would run to 11pm Monday to Wednesday, midnight

Thursday to Saturday, and 10pm on Sundays.

Lanigan first pitched a live music bar. The new plans have turned the volume down, offering instead a “low tempo” room with background music.

The nearest homes are about 50 metres away, on Broughton Street in Kirribilli. The bar’s own sound test predicts music there at 28 decibels, well under the 45 the council allows.

When the first plan fell over, he said the name was simply “a bit of fun,” and that he wanted to wake up a strip he called “completely dead at night.”

Now it is the public’s turn. North Sydney Council is taking submissions until 15 July.

Then it decides whether the troll, at long last, gets to move in under the bridge.