Luxury parking in vogue
Garages add lifts, living space; car condos, ‘second homes’ house vehicles
Since the dawn of the 21st century, the wow factor of a house has centered on the trophy kitchen: a temple of polished stone counters, party-size islands and top-ofthe-line appliances.
But that’s all gotten a bit boring. A new status symbol is zooming onto the domestic landscape: the luxury garage.
The latest space to transform from utilitarian to cool, garages are where Americans store some of their most precious — and most expensive — toys. In 2015, owners of singlefamily detached homes
spent $3.2 billion adding garages, according to an analysis of the most recent available data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the National Association of Home Builders.
Despite urban millennials’ purported distaste for collecting and the rise of ride-hailing, Americans haven’t given up their love of cars. Garages (and Bugattis) of the stars are catnip on blogs, TV and social media: Jay Leno, 50 Cent, Ralph Lauren and Britney Spears are just a few who have shared theirs.
The rich (but not famous) also have jumped on the bandwagon, with tricked-out warehouses, second-homes-as-garages and car compounds.
Short on space? Technology and creativity — and, of course, cash — can still open doors.
“More and more people are interested in urban vs. rural homes, and this presents a challenge if you want to have your cars at your house and you don’t have 40 acres,” said Jonathan Klinger, a spokesman for Hagerty, an insurer of collector cars. And that desire is feeding an industry of space-saving, high-tech lifts, organization systems and even auto elevators that industry experts expect to continue growing as more Americans move to cities and suburbs.
The average-looking twocar garage of the future? It could be hiding three, four or more prestige autos, when it’s not doubling as a cocktail lounge or basketball court.
“If you look at a Ferrari as the equivalent of a Picasso, why would you want to keep it across town and have to go and see it or, worse, have a valet bring it for you?” said Sam Smith, editor at large for Road & Track.
“So much of this is spontaneity . ... You’re going to see more people turning those spaces into a more welcoming and usable chunk of their house.”
Natalie Adams, 41, of Oakland Park, Florida, started collecting JDM (Japanese domestic market) Hondas after spotting “the cutest car I had ever seen.”
She turned a one-story, 1950s warehouse into a combination home/garage and, using car lifts, keeps six of her favorite JDMs in the 1,200-square-foot space; that’s about 60 percent garage and 40 percent living space.
“I don’t have a fancy kitchen,” said Adams, an accountant. “I have a fancy garage.” She actually thinks she made the kitchen too large in her renovation, adding: “I think I will probably shrink its layout so I can get two more cars inside where my kitchen sink and wall cabinets are now.”
Before buying the warehouse, Adams lived in a 300-square-foot condo with her Chihuahua and rented space in a self-storage facility for her cars, but it was broken into twice.
In Coronado, California, a resort town across a bridge from San Diego, car aficionado Chuck Steel is living the dream. He calls his swank garage his “jewel box.”
“It’s such a great relationship you have with your cars; they are part of your family,” said Steel, who shares his custom home, with its views of the Pacific Ocean, with his wife, Rita, and two daughters.
Because space in the beach town is limited and expensive, “I wanted to maximize everything in this home,” Steel said.
The retired contractor has a two-bay garage packed with amenities to safely and elegantly stash his 1935 Packard 1201 coupe convertible, 1948 Ford Super Deluxe convertible, 2017 BMW X6 and 2017 Range Rover LWB.
The Steel garage, unassuming from the outside, is equipped with two PhantomPark subterranean parking lifts, wall sconces hand-forged in Vermont, and a giant mural of a beach framed by LEDs on the back wall. The garage is about 400 square feet on each level, and the extra goodies added about $164,000 to the cost.
Lifts such as those of Steel and Adams are one of the biggest trends in garage makeovers. American Custom Lifts has been producing hydraulic and mechanical lifting systems for cars since 1998, said founder and board chairman Brad Davies. He said business has grown significantly every year.
The company’s lifts, which can range from $3,000 to more than $1 million, are often for “celebrities and the ultrawealthy,” Davies said. The two-deck, driveon PhantomPark, which transports vehicles to a subterranean garage or an upper level, costs $56,000 (plus about $15,000 for installation).
Even simpler lifts allow owners of modestly sized garages to double up, stacking one car over the other.
Brooks Weisblat, 44, who runs the drag-racing website DragTimes.com, bought a house in Davie, Florida, with a three-car garage, but he needed more room. It was going to be difficult to get approval from the city and homeowners association to add garage space, so he ended up with a couple of lifts. Now he has five cars in there: a McLaren, a Lamborghini, two Ford GTs and a Tesla.
“It does make you a little bit nervous at first,” Weisblat said. “It looks like the car is floating in the garage.”
For those who must have more space, there’s a new twist: Private luxury-garage communities are springing up across the country. Your car lives here, but you don’t.
M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan, opened two years ago. Here, car condos (from $125,000 to $1.5 million) on an 87-acre property are customized to be not only places to store autos but also posh, multilevel entertaining spaces, some with cigar rooms and home-theater systems. It’s an autocentric lifestyle package that allows car buffs to hang with other car buffs, said M1 founder Brad Oleshansky.
The property includes a 1½-mile performance track; automotive retail shops and themed restaurants are expected to open next year. Oleshansky said annual condo fees range from $2,280 to $4,560; membership in the M1 Motorsports Club, which is open only to condo owners, requires a one-time $20,000 initiation fee and a $3,750 annual fee.
Phil Berg, a longtime car columnist and author of the “Ultimate Garages” book series, said he started seeing a growing interest in garage upgrades around 2001.
“In California, homes that had been built with threecar garages now needed four bays,” Berg said. Collectors increasingly were renting garage space elsewhere. But that is also changing, he said.
“Eventually guys said, ‘You select a car every day like you select a tie, and you don’t want them 6 miles away in a warehouse.’”