Car condos, the next wave for Las Vegas?
From Florida comes an Associated Press news feature (Review-Journal, 5/30/06, page D1) about the new craze among car collectors: car condos.
Seems that vehicle buffs with bundles of extra cash are buying condos not to live in, but to house their collector cars, motorcycles, boats and personal watercraft.
David deMartino, 47, just bought a 760-square-foot, one-bathroom condo for $212,900 in booming Fort Lauderdale, the AP reports. The condo was bought to house his 1930 Model A Ford coupe street rod, 1961 Corvette convertible, 1970 Mercedes Benz 280SL, and three special edition motorcycles.
The idea makes sense for Las Vegas. The late Ralph Engelstad, creator of the Imperial Palace Hotel, Casino and Auto Collection, used numerous spaces in the IP parking structure to store antique cars not on display. Those boarded up spaces sometimes a row at a time along a wall still house cars that are in rotation. Were Engelstad still alive and in good health, he'd likely jump right into the car condo venture, for he made his first pile as a builder of tract houses. In fact, there's an Engelstad Street in North Las Vegas between Lake Mead Boulevard and Carey Avenue (between Revere and Commerce streets) where you can see some of the subdivision homes.
Probably the second-largest antique car collection in Las Vegas is owned by Jim Rogers, owner of KVBC Channel 3, the local NBC television affiliate, plus a host of other broadcast properties. (Yes, he's the same Jim Rogers who's chancellor of the university system, not without controversy.) Now Rogers could build a couple of car condos for cash one to get his collection out of a garage-warehouse, and the other to finance both towers.
Maybe that's why Mayor Oscar Goodman is buying up all that junkyard land on Hollywood Boulevard in county territory west of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Car Condos make sense there: enjoy the noise with your toys.
