Location:

70 City Road, Southgate (technically)

No one does reviews of car parks. I know my previous write up of two car parks was essentially for a larger vehicle and this is again more of my noted experience rather than a completely detailed review.

Because there was a cricket thing on at the MCG and having had previous experience with football things making it difficult to park at the Federation Square car park I decided to err on the side of caution and park elsewhere. I didn’t park in the QV which is often my alternative car park location because I was going to be going to the lower end of Elizabeth Street.

The car park I selected was the Eureka Car Park owned / run by Wilson Parking. Their website had a photo of the car park, which I’d also checked out on Google Street View and it listed the height, always something useful to know.

I discovered it was also significantly cheaper than Federation Square being $9.00 on a weekend.

It is a minor detour from CityLink and it also slightly further from the city, if you’re heading to Swanston Street or somewhere like that.

But compared to the $16.00 at Federation Square this is something of a saving.

One thing that it didn’t list, which admittedly would be hard to list on a website where you’re trying to provide good basic information to the potential customer and this was the drivability of the car park.

Basically I measure this by how easy it is for me to drive my Ford Ranger up / down the levels of the car park.

It was easier than QV car park because of the height of each level meant you could look over the top / around the parked cars to see cars approaching the choke point in the car park which is where the corners are. In the QV car park these corners are very blind and sometimes involve an S bend.

I didn’t go all the way to the top of the Eureka Car Park but I did get to level 5 which is where I parked. I did reverse into the spot with my tow bar basically touching the wall. My vehicle was in...well close enough in. The wheels were basically within the parking spot.

Things of note, there is a ramp immediately after the ticket machine entry. It’s steep. It covers at least one level, probably closer to two as the lift that deposits you on this level (which is the Southbank exit) is level 2. It’s probably as steep as the exit from Jeff’s Shed is. Thankfully you don’t need to stop at the top like you do there. But it is notable in its steepness.

The other notable thing is the lack of stairs. There are two lifts that service the car park and two potential floors to exit the car park. Level 2 deposits you on the same level (after walking down the ramp) that you entered the car park from. It leads to Southbank. The other the ground level leads to the Eureka Skydeck entrance. I left via the former.

Given its relative closeness to the city and the cheaper price compared to Federation Square I think it’s good as an alternative car park to Federation Square, especially when there’s some sort of sporting event on at one of the sports grounds that’s close to the Federation Square carp park.