I live in New York City. And in New York City, parking spaces are like gold. Fighting over public street parking is a nightmare, and garages are incredibly expensive. People regularly pay hundreds of thousands of dollars—the equivalent of very nice homes in other parts of the country—for single parking spots in New York.
For the longest time, I made do with street parking, electing to battle it out in my Lower East Side neighborhood amongst a sea of Lexus GXs, Toyota Siennas, and Honda Passports, each more dented up than the last. But around summertime last year, I managed to score a great deal on a space in an open-air parking lot just two subway stops away from my home, in downtown Brooklyn. For $99 a month, I could keep my car on one of the lot’s stackers, without having to worry about moving it for street cleaning or it getting broken into.
Stackers, by the way, are these things:
For people who have never lived in NYC, $99 a month for a single parking spot must sound like highway robbery. But people who have lived here will know it’s an absolute steal. In truth, I was able to snag a special “storage” rate online through the company’s web portal, which was really designed for cars that rarely ever left the lot. Normally, monthly spots at this place run around $400. The only downside to the storage rate is that you pay $15 every time you want to take the car out.
Seeing as how I don’t drive to work, this was a great deal for me. Even if I took my car out every weekend, I’d only end up paying $159 per month. So I’ve been keeping my Miata there ever since, where it’s lived a relatively comfortable life (for a New York City car, anyway). The lot increased my monthly rate to $125 back in July, which sucked, but I didn’t consider leaving, since $125 per month is still a wild price for downtown Brooklyn. Even the company representative admitted I was getting a deal:
Source: My email
Then, yesterday, I got some terrible news: The parking lot would be closing permanently. The last day of operations for the place is November 30th, which means I have just 60 days left to bask in the convenience before having to vacate forever.
Source: My email
Part of me hoped I’d be able to keep my treasured monthly spot forever, though deep down, I knew it’d be ripped away sooner or later. Truthfully, I expected something more dramatic, like a phone call from a disgruntled manager who realized I’d been gaming the system. I didn’t think it’d be because the entire lot would just shut down.
Before you suggest I try and plead my case to Edison ParkFast to transfer my monthly account to one of the nearby lots mentioned in the screenshot above, don’t bother. I already tried that. A representative for the company told me over the phone that they wouldn’t be honoring any of the current monthly customers’ pricing. If I wanted to move to a nearby lot, I’d have to pay the advertised monthly pricing ($450 per month, at the time of this writing).
I don’t want to pay $450 a month for a parking spot, obviously. With every other lot in the immediate vicinity priced around $300 a month or more, it seems my Miata is destined for a life back on the streets, right as the salt trucks prepare to hit the road for winter. Pray for it.
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That sounds awful. I think I’ll go run the leaf blower and clear off my driveway and be glad that I don’t have to pay extra for parking at home.
Don’t let Cate Blanchett see you!
Thank you for the reminder of how wonderful it is to have a driveway and a garage. Then again, I’m halfway to PA off of I-80.
Are parking garages in Hoboken or Jersey City any less expensive than Brooklyn?
Yes but they’re so much farther than two subway stops away, which is why this sucks so bad
True. It’s always a tradeoff between convenience and cost.
Convenience matters. I have a neighbor in Queens who rents spots in her driveway, but from LES you’d be traveling a couple of trains then either a bus or some walking to get here. Far cheaper than $450 though.
Genuine question from someone who has never seen one of these stackers until now:
When your car ends up 3 levels up and you want to use it, how do the lower cars get out of the way? Is someone in the parking lot keeping all the keys and allowed to drive the cars?
Yep, spot on. It’s a lot of shuffling around!
That explains the extra free. I thought the stacks had some sort of mechanical contraption to slide the car to the front and then down.
I have a condo in Brighton beach, Brooklyn. I bought it for $360k in 2013 and was “lucky” enough to buy one of the 7 spaces in the rear parking lot for $16k. I could sell.it today for $30k
Sounds like it’s time to move in with Jason. I’m sure he can clear some room under the Apple IIe in his basement.
60 days notice doesn’t seem like much time for that many people to try to find new homes for their cars in a competitive market.
NYC sounds like hell.
For a midwesterner like me it seems totally implausible. Expensive cost of living, high taxes, lots of lousy weather. Yet millions love it there and good for them.
It is.
Just do what everyone else does in NYC and keep the car in New Jersey.
I live on a barrier island in Florida. We have a tiny short driveway that barely fits our Mirage. I was paying $200 a month to store my Nova off the island on the mainland. The places would always raise the rent every 6 months, so I had to find a new storage every 6 months. It was a big enough hassle getting the car out to drive it that I sold the car a few months ago.
I actually did maintain a spot in Jersey until I found this spot. Will probably move back there, provided I’m able to get back in
At this point, that’s kind of a deal anywhere that parking is tough. In little old Portland, ME, the apartment I once rented for $570/mo in the chic West End is now $2500+, AND you get to pay $125/mo per space in the attached parking lot on top. Or deal with street parking that is every bit as brutal as NYC. With a whole lot more weather related parking bans than NYC ever gets.
Two of my kids still live in Maine in Portland. They pay well over 2 grand for rent plus utilities and parking. One lives in Florida near us ands pays $800 utilies and a huge driveway both included. I hear how Florida is expensive to live in and laugh.
And as a bonus, the kids living in Portland pay stiff state income tax every year too. Maine has a middle of the road highest tax rate, but one of the highest effective tax rates in the country because they claw back exemptions and deductions starting at a much lower wage than most states. And the higher rates kick in at relatively low income levels too. Lovely place to visit, I am perfectly happy to not live there anymore. Especially about January an February.
I too ROFL when people complain about the cost of living in “FL”. What they are really complaining about is the cost of living in Miami, Tampa, Naples, St. Pete, Sarasota or Orlando, or on the beach – the “cool places”. In the not so cool areas, it is very, very reasonable. Yeah, insurance sucks, but my house cost $90K, I pay $1250 a year in property taxes (and increases are capped to a low percentage) and I save $15K a year in state income tax. Paying $4K for homeowner’s and flood insurance doesn’t seem so bad compared to that. And combined taxes and insurance for my place in Maine are just as much.
Even as much as I complain about how much my new house is costing me to build here (and I am getting boned by the tariffs, it’s a steel house), it’s less than it would be to build the same custom home in Greater Portland when the cost of the land is considered (nice double lot for $49K vs. $200K minimum), and the property taxes will be half.
Reason number 83 that I wouldn’t want to live in a large city: parking.
I’m sure the income keeps up with the additional cost of living charges like this but… two subway stops and $15 just to get to be able to open the car door?
How does one even auto enthusiast in that environment?
I assume he has a monthly subway pass.
Income does NOT keep up with the cost of living in big cities for the average schmo. Not even close. It’s only really worth it if the job just doesn’t exist anywhere else. Like finance or fashion or Hollywood or something. Or maybe the Techbro jobs in Silly Valley (but not many of them, IMHO). For working stiffs, you have to really, really want to live in the major coastal cities.
As a concrete example, when I was buying my house here in FL in 2017, I was working on a project in La Jolla, CA. The NICE part of San Diego. A guy I was working with was also buying a house, and it was almost identical in size and features (tiny 2bd/2ba), but no garage – street parking, albeit in a quiet neighborhood where that was supposedly not a problem. My house? $90K. His house? $990K. He made $25K a year more than me, but he had a wife making six-figures too, so they could afford it. I admit my house was obviously not that typical, but even at the $250K that a similar house in Maine would have cost, that is a crazy gulf in values. So even if working retail pays 2X, that nowhere near makes up for the difference in cost of living. And in places like NY, your money also doesn’t get you as much. As expensive as my old apartment in Maine is today, it was still a nice, big 2bd that I comfortably shared with a roommate. In NYC the same money gets you a TINY studio where you can sit on the toilet and cook dinner.
Look at the bright side, now you’ll get really good at repairing and replacing slashed convertible tops.
Geez, I was paying about that 30 years ago.
I think I’d just give up on car ownership if I ever moved to NYC. Hardly seems worth it. Just rent a car if you need to go on vacation or whatever.
Growing up there was a (quite wealthy) family friend who lived in Manhattan but spent a lot of the summer vacationing in NY/NJ. He would just rent something fun each summer and have it for a month or two. Teenage me loved getting to drive his S2000, even more so knowing it was a rental 🙂
I lived in Manhattan for 35 years and did not own a car the entire time. The occasional rental sufficed.
Yeah, you’ve been getting a screaming deal. Hell, I was charging my neighbors a hundred bucks for my un-needed reserved spot in a hip neighborhood in Seattle, and that was ten years ago! $125 in NYC?! Hopefully all the scratch you saved will soften the blow when you have to alt-side-park every other day. Condolences!