Newport This Week

Reimagining the Classic Car Cave



Construction for the Newport Car Vaults on John Clarke Road is due to begin in 2022. They will provide museum quality private suites with 25-foot ceilings, a half bath and an owner mezzanine overlooking the space. (Renderings courtesy Cordsten Design Architecture, Vanderbilt International Properties)

Construction for the Newport Car Vaults on John Clarke Road is due to begin in 2022. They will provide museum quality private suites with 25-foot ceilings, a half bath and an owner mezzanine overlooking the space. (Renderings courtesy Cordsten Design Architecture, Vanderbilt International Properties)

For owners of high-end luxury automobiles, finding a safe, warm place for their prized possessions is a bit like purchasing a home for one of their children. After all, in their eyes, these rare cars are often treated as part of the family.

This was the motivation for lo­cal businessman Blake Henderson when he decided to turn a com­mercial business plaza on John Clarke Road into luxury units to store vehicles. The Newport Car Vaults facility will contain 30 indi­vidual units, each with a half-bath and an “office loft,” according to the design documents.

Billed as part of “the latest trend in luxury car storage,” the units have already been put on the mar­ket through Newport-based Van­derbilt International Properties, ranging in price from $325,000 for 1,000 square feet to $795,00 for 2,000- and 3,000-square-foot suites that feature a double-mez­zanine and water views.

Stacie Mills, principal broker with Vanderbilt International Prop­erties, said there has been signifi­cant interest in the units. Though what is being sold is, for the time being, just a photographic render­ing, with construction set to be­gin next year, there are already 10 units under contract.

 

 

“I anticipate that we will con­tinue to see activity as the word gets out,” she said. “It is kind of a small world, car-centric [culture]. So once one [unit] is sold, usually several follow.”

Mills was on her way to meet a potential buyer on Nov. 15, the owner of a rare Jeep that was in­spired by a classic Hollywood film and auctioned off for charity. “He wanted to have his open-air Jeep to drive around in Newport,” she said.

A tentative move-in date for unit owners is set for October 2022 after the first phase of construc­tion, said Mills. The suites should be ready by March 2023. Owners will join a collective condominium association similar to residential developments, and will have 24- hour access to their units. There are plans for heated floors within the units and a common area with recreational offerings.

While the association agree­ments are still being worked out, Mills said they would likely involve owners insuring their units from “the studs in,” while the communal areas will have a separate building insurance policy.

Mills said the majority of inter­ested buyers are looking for a safe place to store their prized vehicles, though a few have expressed in­terest in purchasing a unit as an investment and leasing it out.

Clients own a range of vehicles, from classic Porsches to vintage motorcars. “It’s amazing what some collectors have,” Mills said. “Once they get a taste for [collect­ing], they really want to see more.”

Newport was the site of the in­augural Vanderbilt Cup in 1900, widely considered to be the first American car race. There have been two classic car museums es­tablished in the last five years; the Audrain Automobile Museum on Bellevue Avenue and the Newport Car Museum in Portsmouth, both of which opened in 2017.

But for many private owners of these moveable treasures, the op­tions for storage have been limit­ed. With values in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, this collector subculture in other regions has usually brought with it the proliferation of private, se­cured facilities.

“We are seeing more and more of these car collectors coming into town. So, this makes a lot of sense,” Mills said. “[These units] are be­coming more popular.”

The team behind Newport Car Vaults is promising state-of-the-art amenities. Jairo Rugel, president of Newport County Computers, the company charged with outfitting the facility with digital smart home technology, said that owners will be provided with a menu of addi­tions to the baseline infrastructure.

“The units are going to be a home-away-from-home for many of the owners,” he said. “We’ve got smart lighting, climate control, voice, data [storage] and security camera systems. The whole build­ing is going to be wired.”

All of this is meant to give the car collectors peace of mind, he said.

“If you have a million-dollar Lam­borghini sitting inside a garage, you are going to want to know that it is well taken care of,” he said.

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