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Very High Tech - Elevator Garages in an NYC Hi-Rise

Posted by Zonk on from the moving-on-up dept.

theodp writes "If the hassle of getting groceries from the parking garage to your 12th floor condo has been holding you back from buying a deluxe apartment in the sky, wait no more. Wired reports on the En-Suite Sky Garages at 200 Eleventh Avenue (Flash) in Chelsea, where an 8,000-pound-capacity freight elevator will whisk your Bentley directly into your pad. The convenience doesn't come cheap — a garage-equipped 2BR starts at $4.7M."

22 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Cheaper than parking on the street by jihadist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    New York parking prices are insane and with all the traffic, it's cheaper and faster to bicycle through the freezing snow and angry muggers. Maybe that will eventually make it a "green" city.

    --
    Anti-Globalism
    1. Re:Cheaper than parking on the street by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 4, Funny

      New York... with all the traffic... bicycle through the freezing snow and angry muggers.

      Sounds like a terrific arcade game! :)

    2. Re:Cheaper than parking on the street by jawtheshark · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Too many cars isn't going to result in less cars. High gas prices, on the other hand, might

      Perhaps, but only perhaps. Over here in Europe (assuming you're American, sorry) gas prices are already very high. Filling up my car is a good 70€ these days, and I live in one of the "cheaper" countries in Europe.

      Yet, every morning, there is a steel queue in direction of the closest city. All going to work. It's 8:15 now. Would I leave for work now, getting to my workplace, would take about 35 to 40 minutes. Leaving in an hour or so, will cut that back to 15 minutes or less. Parking is no problem for me, my workplace provides those. Others are less lucky and easily pay 15€ or more a day.

      Of course, I'm one of the bad guys in the game too. My workplace is 10km from here, I have a bicycle road practially from my home to my workplace. I used it a few times in the summer. It's fun, but you get at work completely sweaty (it's a hilly country and most of the time I'm going uphill). There are no showers at my workplace, and you see where I'm going. :-(

      Public transportation you say? Takes ~50 minutes. 25 minutes walking to the train station, 10minutes train, waiting for the bus another 5 minutes, the bus standing in traffic 10 minutes. That's of course when I'm lucky and don't miss a train or a bus. Yes, I also did this before.

      So, just jacking up the gas prices won't help much. From my point of view the time saved is worth the price, so unless gas prices become unaffordable for the common man, nothing will change.

      --
      Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    3. Re:Cheaper than parking on the street by moosesocks · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Obligatory hair-raising video of a helmet-mounted cam of a guy riding from Central Park down to the southern tip of Manhattan. He's got nerves of steel.

      Also, buy a really strong lock.

      Alternatively, NYC's got arguably one of the cheapest and most extensive mass-transit system on the planet. Owning a car in the city is just plain dumb unless you need to cart around big heavy items all the time.

      --
      -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  2. Sort of... by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's like Grand Theft Auto, only you're playing the hooker.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Sort of... by Doug+Neal · · Score: 4, Funny

      What's missing is a managerial game - SimBrothel or something.

      That's a fantastic idea! "Whorehouse Tycoon" ?
  3. one at a time please! by lucas+teh+geek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    yay, now along with being stuck in traffic every morning, you also get the pleasure of waiting for your turn to use the damn lift every morning before you can even leave home.

    --
    TIAEAE!
    1. Re:one at a time please! by kryten250 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Reminds me of the kids at toy stores who keep pushing the button. I bet 'that' won't be a problem. --If I see a kid push it more than 5 times then I act flustered and say "That's too fast! It's gonna crash!!" and run away. The looks alone are worth it...

      --
      FlyingPizzas.com, for the tasteful hermit
    2. Re:one at a time please! by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you're that rich, are you going to queue up to go to work in the morning? Naah, wait for the rabble to clear first.

      --
      Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
  4. Described in 1970 Heinlein Book by GoSmalltalk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This was described fully in Heinlein's "I will Fear No Evil". While the book wasn't exactly great Heinlein, it does describe apartment buildings with elevators for your cars. They are needed because in that worldview, crime was so rampant that your car was an upolstered tank, and your home was a fortress. Happily, that particularly dark vision has yet to come. However, it was written in the years of "burn, baby, burn" and very high crime, so it is certainly fodder for speculative fiction.

    --
    Joseph Bacanskas [|] --- I use Smalltalk. My amp goes to eleven.
    1. Re:Described in 1970 Heinlein Book by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Funny
      Happily, that particularly dark vision has yet to come.

      Dark vision?

      That was Heinlein's depiction of a libertarian paradise!

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  5. wow! by j-stroy · · Score: 5, Funny

    That means I could make out in a car and an elevator at the same time! If I had a girlfriend, and 4.7 million.. But just think of it! A girlfriend!

  6. Re:Elevator Garage? by jdhutchins · · Score: 5, Informative

    Units, units my friend. While watts is a unit of power, it is not a unit of energy- you probably meant to think kilowatt-hours.

    Your equation for energy required to lift a car was wrong- regardless of the units you put on the end, Work = F*distance, not F*time (which is change in momentum)

    Your calculations *should* have been:

    Work required to lift a 1000kg car 50 meters: W = mg(deltaH) = 1000 * 9.8 * 50 = 490kJ
    Work required to lift your car every day for a year: 178.85MJ

    In more familiar units, since 1 kWh = 3 600 000 J,
    Energy required to lift the car: 0.1361 kWh
    Energy required to lift your car per year: 49.68 kWh
    Energy required for 100 units: 4.97MHh

  7. Groceries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to live on the 23rd floor of a high-rise in Chicago. Groceries were never a problem. The 1st floor of the building was a grocery store and they delivered with purchases of $20 or more (excluding alcohol and cigarettes). Likewise all the local grocery stores would deliver to your apartment free of charge with a minimum purchase. You could phone or fax your grocery order in and pay for it on delivery (even pay with a check) or you could go down and select your items, pay for them, and one of the box boys would lug the stuff up for you.

    It would've been possible for a hermit to never leave the building. The local laundry picked up and delivered for free. The drug store would deliver prescriptions for free. And we had a full gym with half-Olympic pool on the 5th floor. There was even a dog-walk service available for a small fee. That's how things work in inner cities.

  8. Your all missing the point - it's about security by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Security for both you and your car. no bitch can key your $250k car and no homeless bum can jump you in the car park.

    I would totally pay for one if i had the cash.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  9. Consider by fishbowl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The kind of people who "live" in the really expensive NYC real estate tend to not spend much time there themselves. These apartments are status symbols. Places to send your clients who want something better than a Times Square hotel room. Places to have an occasional party. That sort of thing. The person who has a Bentley and a $5 million apartment in NYC also has a "ranch" outside Denver, a mansion on the Big Island of Hawaii, and an island in the Caribbean... and somebody on the payroll to deal with the Bentley, and drive it, and park it. Not for the owner. For the people the owner is trying to impress...

    --
    -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
  10. Re:Elevator Garage? by Rudisaurus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Re modding up -- that's sadly true; they already have. :)

    GP beat me to it. But just to put things in perspective, the energy required to lift your 1000 kg car once is roughly equivalent to leaving a 100 W light bulb lit for 81 mins. Surprisingly modest, actually.

    Cheers, Rudi

    --
    licet differant, aequabitur
  11. Re:They will sell by JonathanR · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It would be much more cost effective to pay somebody else to haul your groceries up the stairs.

  12. Learn something new everyday by not-quite-rite · · Score: 4, Funny

    You subscribe to Elevator World?

    Wow

    You have opened my eyes to a whole new world - Elevator Geeks!

    I can picture it now....

    "How to overclock your elevator in 5 easy steps..."

    "Escalators - Are they the campers of the Elevator market?"

    "Pictures of the top 10 elevators, and their designers - Sealed Section" (very naughty!)

    Etc :P

  13. Re:Elevator Garage? by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Aren't electric motors amazing? They tell me they're going to run cars some day =)

  14. Driving in Manhattan by Mikey-San · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you're dumb enough to drive in Manhattan, you probably need a machine to park your car for you.

    --
    Mikey-San
    Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
  15. I saw a copy of this magazine at the store by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was right next to Oatmeal Enthusiast