About 80 new car parking spaces have opened in Wollongong’s CBD this week.
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The spaces – at $4 a day – are in the old Sam’s Warehouse car park on the corner of Railway Parade and Rawson Street.
The doors shut at the Wollongong store in August, when the chain’s parent company, Discount Super Group, collapsed.
The company had been leasing the site from George Harrison’s Emibarb Property Trust.
On Monday, Emibarb lodged a DA with Wollongong City Council for a $38million 26-storey development on the site.
But until that project went ahead, Mr Harrison said the car park would be open for the public and run on a month-to-month licence by Australian National Car Parks.
Mr Harrison said the extra spaces would come in handy when the CBD became more congested over Christmas.
‘‘We don’t expect the DA to be approved until January or February, so it will carry over Christmas at least,’’ Mr Harrison said.
‘‘And it might even be beyond that because then we have to get the construction certificate to start working on that. So it could even be a year.’’
As well as providing extra spaces, Mr Harrison said it would also ‘‘bring in a bit of income’’.
He was also interested in leasing the Sam’s Warehouse retail space.
‘‘If we could find a temporary tenant in there too, it would be ideal,’’ he said.
‘‘In the meantime, we’re hoping our DA goes through very quickly and we can start to do something on the site that will be more attractive than what is there.’’