Mr Rowen paid $186,500 for 57 carparking spaces on the western side of Boree Street in 1992.

The carpark was later sold to Coles and the carparking spaces redistributed.

Mr Rowen said despite repeated requests council has never been able to explain where his carparking spaces ended up.

He said the missing carparking spaces were now worth almost $20,000 each, or more than $1 million in total.

He believes his carparking spaces have been moved to distant locations which are of no benefit to his tenants in Rowen’s Arcade.

He plans to seek compensation unless the issue is resolved by council providing parking spaces within a reasonable distance of his development (ie north of Coles).

“If I had thought my spaces were not guaranteed and could be sold in the future, I would have used the money to buy my own land for parking instead of giving it to council in the first place,” Mr Rowen told the Times last week.

He said the problem had been on-going now for 20 years and the information he has been waiting for should be immediately available.

“These are physical spaces that have to exist somewhere if council's position is to have any credibility,” he said last week.

“They must be identifiable as mine and it should be a simple job to tell me where they were relocated to. Then we can decide if they are within a reasonable distance or should be replaced with ones that are.

“I don't think there are many people who would allow something of such value to be taken away from them without even an explanation. I'm calling for a fair go and the return of what is mine.”