Drivers in Hobart turned up to collect their cars from a well-known city car park on Friday morning, only to find them locked behind a boom gate and a request to pay $70 in cash to retrieve their car.
The former Swisherr car park at the old K&D Warehouse site was suddenly shut down, trapping vehicles inside and a sign on the gate telling drivers the space was “no longer available for public use”.
Roger Radford, who regularly parked at the site before heading to work nearby, said he parked there without any issues in the morning but a colleague arrived around 10am to find the boom gate locked.
“A heap of cars locked in there, one of them being mine,” he said.
Radford said drivers were told they’d need to pay $70 in cash to retrieve their vehicles.
“No exceptions,” he said.
“Seventy bucks cash is a bit steep, not many people carry cash these days and with the cost of living crisis.”
Radford said the site had previously been managed under an ongoing agreement with Swisherr, but ownership recently changed hands.
The Tony White Group purchased the former K&D warehouse on Melville Street from the University of Tasmania last month for $31 million.
Radford said there’d been no communication about whether parking would continue under the new ownership, so regulars had kept using the site for around a month after the changeover.
He said the parking app Curb Parking was still accepting bookings for the site on the morning of the lockout.
“It feels like they’re following a process, they’ve just got things in the wrong order,” he said.
“A bit of notice first, shut down the Curb app, then start locking people in, right?”
Radford said a colleague spent at least 15 minutes on the phone to Wilson Security trying to sort out access, speaking to multiple people.
“The contact centre people are saying, you know, they think it’s a bit rough,” he said.
“There was no notice given.”
In a statement to Pulse on Saturday afternoon, after repeated attempts to contact the company on Friday, a Wilson Security spokesperson said no motorists were charged a fee to exit the car park.
“The reference to a $70 let-out fee appeared on a standard sign template used at other car parks, but it was not applied in this instance,” the spokesperson said, but would not detail why the sign had unusually requested a cash-only payment.
The car park came under new ownership from Thursday, which saw Wilson Security engaged by Tony White Group to help secure the site following the change.
“As such, the boom gates were secured on Thursday after the car park had been cleared,” the Wilson Security spokesperson said.
“A guard was not stationed onsite earlier on Friday morning because the site was closed and was not intended to be open for public parking.”
“When Wilson Security became aware motorists had accessed the closed site on Friday despite the boom gates being secured, a guard was placed onsite to secure the car park, prevent further entry and assist motorists to exit.”
The spokesperson said the car park’s appearance on the previous parking app “contributed to confusion for motorists”.
Tony White Group did not respond to requests for comment.
