First look: Porsche Design Tower's sky high garages
Phil Keating reports on Miami's new 60-story Porsche Design Tower and its automated elevator for autos.
For years, Juan Verdiquio lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, running a large shoe manufacturing factory. Today, he’s laced up one of the sexiest, sleekest and coolest condos in the U.S.
Verdiquio bought his 5400-square foot, three-bedroom unit for about $8 million in the brand new Porsche Design Tower in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. It has $5000 toilets -- each equipped with seat warmers and lids that rise up as you approach them -- and a plunge pool on a spacious balcony, right next to a bar and grill.
But none of this mattered to Verdiquio when put his money down. In fact, he bought in without ever even seeing the floorplan for just one reason: the building has a first of its kind, fully-automated car elevator, which whisks yours from the garage to your home and parks it in a glass, fireproof room, visible from the living room.
“This is the ultimate boy’s toy, because it shows off your cars, and you got your grill and it appeals to men,” says Verdiquio. “It’s the ultimate man cave, as big as you can get it!”
The revolutionary car elevator is the brainchild of developer Gil Dezer. In fact, he’s trademarked it, naming it the “Dezervator.” And it works like this:
After passing through three laser identifiers, you drive into the garage, park between two yellow lines and turn off the engine. From there, the Dezervator takes over everything. The car spins around like a record, then a dolly rolls out to it, lifts it up, hooks it and pulls it into the glass-enclosed elevator.
The doors close from the top and bottom and a transponder on your car tells the Dezervator exactly where to take it, spinning and smoothly rising you up to your unit in the 60 story tower. Upon arrival, the doors open, the dolly pushes your car into your garage/display room and you’re home sweet home.
“I’m a guy who grew up in a family that loves cars,” says Dezer. "And we always thought about how we could sleep with our car in the living room, so we figured ‘let’s build a building for guys just like us."
His Porsche Design Tower has 132 units, starting in the $6-8 million range. Just 6 units remain, including the $32 million, 4-story penthouse, which featuring 20’ tall ceilings and 19,000 square feet of living space. Twenty-two billionaires are among the new owners.
There are three Dezervators feeding owners and their cars to their condos and since it’s a second or third home for many of them, there will likely never be a wait to get into the elevator. Porsche Design, a sister company to the automaker, designed the building’s vas interiors, but the Dezervator is American-conceived and American-made, built and tested in a 10 story building in Chicago.
The project cost about $550,000,000 to build, and the condo sell-out is $840,000,000 so far.
“What we really wanted to create here is a house, home in the sky, concept,” says Dezer. “And that’s what we’ve achieved. We have your own garage, we have a balcony with a swimming pool, so you have all the components you would find in a single family home, in the sky. This is a masterpiece. I’m extremely proud of this one.”
And for the millionaire who demands extreme privacy, or simply doesn’t want to see or talk to anyone when they get home, it’s here. You can drive off of the highway, into the garage, into the Dezervator and ride up to your condo without having to say a word or be seen by anyone. Except your car, which for the truly, obsessive car lover, is part of the family, with its own room right there in your condo in the sky.