I found this yesterday. I thought the video was cool. This place is near my home so I think I'll attend the car show on 10-5 and check it out.

Are these common? Outside of Leno's Garage, I haven't seen anything like this so, new to me:

AutoMotorPlex ? A Place To Enjoy Your Passion

 

That is pretty wild, Dick B. with 13 cars and 4,000 sq ft of the structure is craziness. And his son bought 2,000 sq ft adjacent for 4 more cars. I guess if you are that into cars it will make sense. These people are really into just hanging out at a garage with their cars, there is a clubhouse, etc.

An acquaintance many years ago did something similar, only for himself. He bought a large 16,000 sq ft warehouse building to house his toys. A $1,500,000 speed boat, a Lambroghini, the $120,000 International truck to pull the speed boat, plus assorted other sports cars and sedans. He sub-leased extra space for other friends who were enthusiasts and wanted to store their stuff.

What a great idea to formalize that into a business!

 

Yes, I am that into cars - but me thinks automobile enthusiasts are an aging population and fewer children share their enthusiasm.

Of my 4 kids, only 2 repair their own cars. Both do it to save money, and there's nothing wrong with that. Neither of them have a passion for cars though. Even my wife has since drawn the line. "No more restorations".

It'll be interesting to see if this is a viable long term and expandable business model for them, but geez, if there's this much demand here in Minnesota, surely the Southern/ Western U.S. would have a demand. Our driving seasons are so short for collector cars.

 

People who enjoy collecting cars will always be there, whether it is young or old. Most of the time a dream for the young until they have enough money when they are old. I would be curious as to how many people in that garage restore themselves, it looks like a pretty clean storage environment, not a repair garage? Maybe they have a bay for lifting and working on your car, I didn't dig that deep.

If you define an enthusiast as only those who work on their own cars or restore themselves then I suppose it could be a dwindling population, but on the other hand that may just be true for the "city kids".

I don't agree with that definition, to me an enthusiast is someone who enjoys owning classic or in some fashion "special" cars regardless if they pay someone else to work on it. Certainly the wrenchers of the world are in a different class of enthusiasm!

 

I guess I did bundle them together didn't I Mark? I agree that a true enthusiast doesn't have to be the one to tear down and rebuild his own cars.

I also wondered about whether or not the cars that are stored there are also serviced, or can be serviced there. I'll know more when they have their next open.

 

I did some research into these years ago after reading about them in of all places, the Wall Street Journal. They are more common in places where garage space is at a premium, like the Northeast or in Europe. But they are popping up in the midwest and even the southwest where collectors traditionally have had plenty of cheap land. Here is one recently started north of Dallas. A little too far from me and in a very expensive part of town.

Garages Of Texas

But I understand why somebody would rent or buy space in such a place. Most homes are 2-car garages and you tend to have to buy more bedrooms and bathrooms than you need to get a 3 or 4 car garage. And if your collection is larger than that, you have few options.

When I outgrew my suburban 3-2-2 postage stamp lot, I called all the suburban cities within a reasonable drive of my job in downtown and asked what they would let me build. All had ridiculous restrictions on accessory garages. I wound up buying an older home on a large lot on the wrong side of the tracks in Fort Worth and built a large steel building in the back yard. But the year after I built my building, the city adopted new posh suburban-style ordinances that would have limited the size to no larger than a 2-car equivalent. They're so afraid that somebody is going to try and run a business out of their single-family zoned neighborhood that they impose all sorts of restrictions.

If I had the space, there'd be no stopping me. But then I'd rather have ten $10,000 cars than one $100,000 car. What some of my friends around here do is rent aircraft hangars at municipal or private airports. Often a group of two or three guys will go in together and rent a hangar. I just don't like the idea of paying rent (collecting it yes, but not paying it.)

My father built in a rural area a "barndominium", a large metal building with the equivalent of an extended-stay hotel suite inside a portion of it. That may be one option to expand my collection but I have been considering more of an investment, buying a small multi-tenant office-warehouse building that I could rent out all but one small unit to use for myself. Would be ideal if the other spaces were rented to such businesses as perhaps a machine shop or body shop.