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.”
Wilson Security and Tony White Group did not respond to requests for comment.
