From the NY Post today:
As residential buildings continue to replace parking lots and garages around New York City, finding permanent space for your car has never been harder.
But drivers looking to buy their own space now have a reason for hope.
The Parking Club, a renovated 130-space parking garage at 185-187 Pacific St. in Cobble Hill, has just launched sales with pricing from $185,000 per spot, The Post can reveal.
The story goes on to say: “It’s not the city’s first parking garage ‘condo’ — defined as a garage whose spaces sell as deeded condominiums — but it’s the first to pair those spaces with Beverly Hills-style valet service for buyers.”
Cons: $185,000 is an absurdly expensive amount to pay for a parking space in a city full of public transit where the over-reliance on cars is increasingly being recognized as a key safety, environmental and health hazard that needs to be addressed to improve the livability of the city (which are made even more dangerous as the days get shorter and darker, despite victim blaming that would posit that pedestrians are somehow at fault for getting run over by two-ton metal hunks of angry metal with a single occupant), not to mention that a “parking condo” takes up rapidly dwindling real estate space and therefore drives an even bigger divide in a class war where people spend more than some folks would make in four years on a place to store a car they might use a few times a month.
Pros: If you can build a fake car out of cardboard and live inside it, this may be the cheapest way to own property in New York City.
Yes, lots of people need cars in transit-starved areas or to get to jobs outside the city. But they’re likely not the ones who can afford $185,000 for a parking space. Here’s a rough breakdown that estimates owning a car in NYC would cost you $5,400-$8,400 a year — not counting your parking condo.