Australian Technology Park venue shock

It was a no brainer. “Our last event, on a weekend we had people trying to park everywhere. It was impossible”, said Ruby Chronis, Director of Sales at Australian Technology Park Conference & Exhibition Centre in Sydney. They took the decision to close the venue six months ahead of plan, after developer Mirvac acquired the site and ripped out the car parks.

Just a day after Ms Chronis sent a farewell message to the events industry, Sydney wedding venue group Doltone House announced they have taken over the venue lease and plan to operate the exhibition hall, theatre, and dining room.

Ms Chronis earlier had the unpalatable task of calling all contracted events to advise Mirvac were accelerating their building schedule which would adversely affect events with construction noise and traffic, and a dramatic reduction in parking.

But Doltone House have taken over the venue, without any previously contracted events. They point to the one remaining parking location, under Channel Seven’s media centre and say that parking can be prebooked using the divvyparking.com system. A sample enquiry today showed 27 spaces available, and May 11 – the furtherest date the system would accept – showed 45 spaces. In between, the greatest number of spaces we could find that were open for booking were 45.

Whether this is the ultimate limit of parking spaces available on the site remains to be seen, but if it is then it is woefully inadequate compared to the many hundreds of spaces previously available but now covered in construction.

We contacted Doltone House for comment.