Promise of better, cheaper parking

PARKING fees will be slashed at the Bruce Bishop Car Park, which will undergo a drastic modernisation under its new owner.

Care Park is the new coowner of the car park along with developer Far East Consortium after purchasing it from the Gold Coast City Council for $48 million.

Care Park state manager Peter Roberts told The Gold Coast Bulletin the company would make parking at the facility cheaper.

“We have no plans to develop the site and plan to run it as a car park as well as offer a better and more affordable service for the Gold Coast’s people,” he said.

“We will change the majority of pricings — they will be 20-70 per cent cheaper than what council are currently offering.

“There are more than 1500 bays in the car park and on average only 500 are actually used, so there are about 1000 which are not being used, so we want to make it cheaper for Gold Coasters through cutting the rates.”

Based on the current council fees, this would mean motorists would pay between $3 and $10.50 to park there for a full day.

The cost of a weekly pass would range from $8.80 to $30.70.

Comparatively, it costs a maximum of $5.50 a day to park at the Evandale precinct, a flat fee of $12 at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre, $20 to park for more than six hours at the Oasis Shopping Centre and $20 to park for more than four hours at the Paradise Centre.

Mr Roberts said the car park would also undergo a drastic revamp to improve the experience of customers using it.

“We are planning to spend a considerable amount of capital on improving the car park as well — the current equipment there is old and so there will also be new painting and signage,” he said. “It will offer a much better experience.”

Mr Roberts said many people did not realise there were multiple levels of underground car parking which he hoped would be filled by motorists attracted by the lower prices.

“Underneath the transit centre there are about 1000 bays, which most days only have about 5-10 cars in them, and the only way we can maximise this is offering lower costs,” he said.

“We want it to be cheaper than it currently is.”

It will be the latest revamp of the site after council spent $8.3 million in the past two years to solve the building’s concrete cancer issues and stabilise it. The issues came to light after part of the car park crumbled in 2016, injuring a woman.