Does your car deserve a home as luxe as you do? Arthur Aidala certainly thinks so.
The native New Yorker’s been a car nut for most of his life. Making peanuts as an assistant district attorney in the early 1990s, Aidala was forced to move back in with his parents.
But with no NYC rent or bills of his own to pay, the then 25-year-old impulsively purchased a 1986 Alfa Romeo Spider for over $3,000 (that he took out a loan for).
This splurge eventually led to an impressive 15-car collection made up of some head-turning beauties: a 1988 Ferrari Testarossa, a 1965 Mustang, a 1966 Alfa Romeo Duetto, and a 1962 Mercedes 190SL.
“My goal was to purchase cars from the original owner who is now in their 80s, and they just want a good home for their auto,” Aidala told The Post.
A good home is exactly what the car aficionado gave them.
Aidala leaves a few of them in storage units, but there’s no fun in never seeing or driving those wheels.
So he created a man cave-like East End home for six of his favorite cars that he regularly swaps out “based on the season,” where they can live in luxury – and he can sit among them with a beer and some friends, enjoying the view.
“During COVID, we were sitting there with a cigar in the garage, and The Big Lebowski movie on a loop,” he told The Post, noting that his plush car crash pad has become a de facto clubhouse, “Many of my friends know the code to that garage.”
When it comes to his collection, Aidala insists he “drives everything.”
“It’s like spending time with a different person,” he gushed.
“The only garage queen is the Testarossa because it’s worth the most money [it could now easily go for $148,000] and if anything breaks on that car, it’s wicked expensive… at least once a month, every six weeks, I start it, drive it 1 mile to make sure everything is moving then pull it back into the driveway.”
It’s safe to say, a garage full of luxe cars is the newest Hamptons must-have.
Everyone knows the South Fork is a mecca for major petrolheads. Seven luxe dealerships, including Porsche and Land Rover, sit clustered together in barely two square miles in and around Southampton. Driving around on a summer weekend can feel more like an accidental classic car rally than a commute.
Aidala bought his four-bedroom, 1.2-acre house in Quogue, Long Island more than twenty years ago and slowly started improving the original standard garage – adding a dehumidifier and HVAC systems to protect against heat and cold, plus a double lift so he could expand the capacity to six cars,
“I really went crazy about a decade ago,” he confessed. That’s when he started truly pimping out the interior, adding that giant TV, a cigar-smoking area, a refrigerator, and designer flooring. Hence, it’s as much a rec room as a garage.
“It’s definitely increased the value of my house,” he said of the 500-sq ft space, which he estimates he’s spent around $25,000 improving.
“If someone pulled into the driveway with some fancy car to buy the house, I would add another $50,000 to whatever I was asking as the price,” he laughed, though, of course, he has no plans to sell.
He’d be making a smart move, according to Mark Matthews — a Southampton-based architect who has first-hand knowledge of how much of a priority such five-star, four-wheeled homes are here.
Take the six-figure renovation of an old barn on a family compound in Bridgehampton he completed, where 25% of the budget was earmarked solely for the garage.
The barn became a five-bedroom home, but the car-collecting owner wanted to keep his 15-strong haul on hand, but discreetly.
“He didn’t want to have the house feel like an automobile showroom,” said Matthews, who suggested instead a subterranean solution, sunk beneath the 1,000-foot-long patio.
The slab concrete structure is temperature-controlled and has a turntable at the center; it not only makes getting cars in and out of the bunker easier, but different models could be displayed on it.
This owner, who Matthews preferred to keep anonymous, too, tapped Matthews to add a social area, including a TV and lounge, that overlooks the garage so he can hang out with his friends and his wheels. “I get to make dreams come true – and in this case, it included cars.”
Canny developers are increasingly recognizing that such pimped-out petrol palaces are near-essential for luxury real estate in the area.
The builder of 39 Green Hollow Road in East Hampton was one of them: the eight-bedroom estate, on the market for $10.495m, comes complete with the same amount of space for your cars.
“The demand for garages comes up in every conversation – people say ‘We do have a lot of cars, and we don’t want 10 cars in the driveway’,” broker Bradford “B.B.” King, who’s repping this listing, told The Post.
When the seller built the property, for his own use, at first, in 2019, he incorporated hydraulic lifts and climate controls for his own car collection, which includes an Aston Martin DB4 and a Mercedes convertible. “It was part of the masterplan,” said King.
Now that he knows there are ample other would-be buyers like him, he’s selling.
He isn’t going far, though: that same client is eyeing a new, even fancier garage in his next development, digging down three levels to add vertical and lateral elevators to allow up to a dozen cars to be stored in situ.
He even developed his own software so the entire operation can be controlled entirely from a smartphone. That asset will add at least $1,000,000 in extra costs to the project.
“A good garage is essential and not just for the cars,” said King, who’s currently touring new homes for another client who isn’t impressed by a spiffy East Hampton estate with an incredible pool suite and spectacular grounds.
“I’m not bothered about anything like that,” he told King, saying: “I just want to make sure the garage is right for my cars.”
It wasn’t – so he refused to make an offer.
There’s such demand for bougie garages out East, King continued, that he’s had owners approach him about some warehouse space he owns in Southampton.
“One man had 15 cars and couldn’t find a place to store them, and wanted to talk about renting,” explained King.
That car fanatic could also just sign up for a unit from The Hangar Group, instead, a startup which aims to break ground on its own car condo complex in Southampton this fall on an unloved scrap of land near Gabreski Airport, where the East End jetset hop on and off their private jets like subway cars.
Car collector Scott Cunningham came up with the idea for the company because he needed it for himself.
He and his wife downsized as empty nesters — but to their disappointment, the garage attached to their townhouse was subpar versus the ample space they had in their family home.
“The ah-ha moment was when I was at a small airport – I’m a pilot as well – and a friend of mine rented a large hangar, where he kept his airplane as well as cars, motorcycles and a TV and bar area,” he told The Post.
“I was hanging out there one afternoon, watching the sunset with the game on and having a drink. And it occurred to me: there should be something like this for car guys.”
The Hangar Group – that name’s a nod to its origins – opened its first location, midway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, in 2019, followed soon after by a second site in Palm Beach.
Initially, Cunningham offered an assortment of unit sizes, starting from two-car 600 sq ft up to 1,300 sq feet; he found that the larger units sold faster, and the smaller ones mostly sold to be knocked together.
He said the 65 units at the Hamptons location, a 33-acre site right up against the LIRR that was once eyed for a golf course or tennis courts, will be around 1,700-1,800 sq ft, with pricing around the same as in SoFla, at $800 per sq ft.
Crucially, no one will be able to buy more than three of them. “We’d rather have 55 owners than 35, because it makes it more of a club and a community.” There’s a clubhouse, too, of course, where they can socialize, which will also be included in the Hamptons site.
The waiting list has hit 100 people, Cunningham claims, though he has yet to open for sales.
People need such facilities out East, Cunningham said, for the reasons real estate agent King and architect Matthews spelled out: car collectors love their haul, but they don’t want to feel like they’re living in a showroom.
Some communities also constrain the square footage on a residential property that can be deeded to a garage versus a home, making that even harder.
Buying a Hangar Group unit solves those problems, while adding an amenity for life; most owners relish the chance to turn this high-end garage into an Aladdin’s man cave.
Lucila Anderson of Allula Design Group has been the go-to decorator at Hangar Group’s Florida sites – she’ll also be on call for the new Hamptons buyers. Some owners have handed her as much as $800,000, she said – solely to redecorate the interiors.
One tasked her with outfitting his garage as a nightclub – DJ decks, blacklights and UV-activated wallpaper were all essential, plus a large bar – and another owner showed Lucila a snapshot of a British pub, asking her to make the garage remind him of his favorite drinking den.
The standout, though, was a lair-like playboy pad whose owner had bought a double unit. He wanted a showcase for three cars, with special lighting, as well as memorabilia displays related to the cars.
There’s a sunken lounge to enjoy a drink amid the cars and a space to showcase the owner’s wine collection. Upstairs, overlooking those cars, there’s a 100” TV, poker table and seating area.
“If James Bond had a garage, it would be this one,” she told The Post.
