Drivin' On Up: En-Suite Garages Make for Deluxe Apartments in the Sky

In most Manhattan apartments, a closet counts as a bonus. But a new condo building at 200 Eleventh Avenue in Chelsea ( conveniently located just steps from a nudie bar and a taxicab body shop) takes New York real estate excess to dizzying heights. Behold the En-Suite Sky Garage — an 8,000-pound-capacity freight elevator that whisks your Bentley directly into your pad. Of course, vertical parking is an old idea: At the Starrett-Lehigh Building, two blocks away, massive lifts that could accommodate entire boxcars of cargo once connected a ground floor rail yard with upstairs loading docks. Today, Martha Stewart rides those same elevators in her car to get to her office. At 200 Eleventh, this extravagance will run you at least seven figures — though it looks like every unit will be spoken for when the building opens in 2008. The cheapest garage-equipped two-bedroom carries a $4.7 million price tag, and the 3,585-square-foot penthouse runs $16.8 million. But, really, bringing your car inside is a luxury only in Gotham. As coordinating architect Sara Lopergolo puts it, "It's like suburbia in the sky."