Another group of Miami developers is looking to cash in on Miami’s luxury car collectors.
Louis Birdman and Jay Massirman are leading the development of AutoHouse, a seven-story, 45-unit car storage with a “Collectors Club,” a spokesperson for the developer told The Real Deal.
The project is in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood at 375 Northwest Seventh Street. Units will range from $350,000 to more than $1.5 million, and will have the option to include wet bars, audio-visual systems and other “man cave” features. Owners will access their units via a 24-hour, secured lobby with car elevators.
The social club, on the penthouse level, will be designed by ID & Design International with indoor and outdoor spaces and views of downtown Miami and Overtown. It will also include private dining and board rooms, a lounge, a Formula 1 simulator, and wine and liquor storage. Synthesis Architects is designing AutoHouse.
Developer sales are being handled by Jessica Crockett and Brooke David of Turnberry International Realty’s JB Team, and broker Seth Kaufman.
Records show Gloria B. Lewis owns the Overtown land, on the west side of I-95. A spokesperson for the developer did not immediately respond for comment. Land prices have surged in Overtown, Miami’s historically African-American neighborhood where mixed-use projects like MiamiCentral and Miami Worldcenter are under construction.
Luxury car storage has also popped up in Coral Gables, where a group of local developers is building Gables Auto Vault, a five-story luxury car storage condo. Prices there range from $500,000 to $2 million for units that hold anywhere from six to 20 cars. It’s currently under construction.
And over in Sunny Isles Beach, developer Gil Dezer has also tapped the car enthusiast demographic: Porsche Design Tower will include a Dezervator, a car elevator that delivers vehicles to a resident’s “sky garage.”
Massirman, a storage developer and the managing director of Rivergate Companies, said in a statement that “upscale” storage has been in demand. “In major cities, people don’t have the room to store their 25-car collection, so they have to either trust third-party garages or bear the burden of managing their own warehouses,” he said.
Birdman is part of the development team for Zaha Hadid’s One Thousand Museum.