In N.Y. Apartment Buildings, Bicycles Muscle In
BRIAN WHITELEY loves his bicycle, a black fixed-gear Schwinn that he rides around
Mr. Whiteley, an artist, and his wife, Mar Granados, an architect, are not permitted to take their bikes inside the
Now, they are hoping to buy a place of their own. And as they zip from appointment to appointment on their bicycles, scouting one-bedrooms in Brooklyn and
Mr. Whiteley’s Schwinn and Ms. Granados’s SE Draft do not need a fancy place — just a spot that’s secure, and not inside an apartment.
“I have a lot of my artwork up,” Mr. Whiteley said. “I’d really prefer not have a bike on the wall next to it.” He does not think the Schwinn will complement his painting on glass of a somber-looking deer under the words “Jealous Beast.”
In a city where finding sufficient space for your shoes can be a challenge, figuring out where to keep a bicycle is not easy, and few people are satisfied propping their muddy wheels up against the sofa. And as bike ridership in
A survey conducted by the city in 2009 found that more than half a million New Yorkers are regular bicycle riders, hopping on at least several times a month. According to the New York City Department of Transportation, the number of New Yorkers who commute to work by bicycle more than doubled from 2006 to 2010, and grew by 13 percent from 2009 to 2010.
The Bloomberg administration has been seeking ways to make the city more hospitable to bicycles. Since 2007, the city has carved out 259 miles of bike lanes and protected routes in the five boroughs. Some brokers say as many as half their clients now ask about bike storage, and though few buyers consider it a deal-breaker, marketing materials now make the most of bike rooms and proximity to bikable parks.
Dklb Bkln, a new rental building at
At a building marketed by Halstead Property, +art, at 540 West 28th Street, a room off the lobby was to be used for cold storage, to hold deliveries from companies like Fresh Direct until residents returned home. But it is now being converted into a bike room. The grocery-holding room was moved to a reconfigured space in the basement.
“We started seeing high demand for bike storage about 18 months ago,” said Stephen G. Kliegerman, the president for development marketing at Halstead. “It’s an amenity I think people are starting to expect in a new building.”
Superior Ink, a Related Companies condominium on
But, white gloves or no, bike storage tends to be easier to find in new buildings, whether condo or rental. As of 2009 most new buildings, including multifamily residential, have been required by the city to provide some bike storage. (Offering it is also a relatively inexpensive way for a developer to gain points toward LEED certification, which measures a building’s environmental impact.)
“It adds to the general tone of the building,” said Shaun Osher, the founder of the brokerage CORE, who kept his rusty bike on the fire escape when he first moved to
The developers of 80 Metropolitan, a condo building in
Some of the established spaces were nabbed by Robert Schupp and his family, who live in a three-bedroom apartment in the building. Mr. Schupp, 41, his wife, Nona Reuter, 44, and their 8-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, moved to
Mr. Schupp, who works as a conflict analyst at a nonprofit organization in
“Sure, I get to work a little sweaty,” he said, “but better that it’s my own sweat, rather than everybody else’s from the subway.”
Mr. Schupp said he had noticed far more bicycles on his daily commute than there were a decade ago. He said he had also seen plenty of bike stabling while he was looking for an apartment.
“We were really pleasantly surprised that it was something that was advertised in all the new buildings,” Mr. Schupp said. “It shows how much more normal it’s become to cycle in
Bike storage was nonnegotiable for Dror Harel, an airline executive who is also relocating to
“We live on bikes here,” Mr. Harel said by telephone, while riding his bicycle on the streets of
According to their broker, Stuart Sussman, an executive vice president of CORE, the first question out of Mr. Harel’s mouth on the men’s recent whirlwind tour — they saw 14 apartments in one day — was “where do we put the bikes?”
Mr. Harel was unimpressed by some of the crowded storage areas he saw, and by suggestions that a bike can be hoisted and fastened to a wall.
“We didn’t like the creative ideas of the Americans,” Mr. Harel said. “A closet was not an option.”
They settled on a one-bedroom in a rental building on
Plenty of longtime New Yorkers, too, are also making bike storage a priority in an apartment hunt.
“There was an apartment we put a bid on, and then it occurred to us to ask about bike storage,” said Natalie Danford, 44. It turned out, she explained, that the answer was no. “That was one of the reasons we backed out. We can’t afford a 3,000-square-foot apartment, sadly, and a bike takes up a lot of room.”
Luckily Ms. Danford, a writer, and her husband, Paolo Pierleoni, 48, who works for a translation agency, have been able to stay with Ms. Danford’s parents on the Upper West Side since they sold their old apartment in the
The couple have spent several months searching for a
“Our old apartment had bike storage, and it was cheap, like $25 a year for a hook, which was fabulous,” Ms. Danford said of the postwar building where they lived for 20 years. “But I was somewhere recently that was $100 per month. It struck me as a lot of money for a hook, but I would probably do it if I lived there, because what else are you going to do?”
The Beatrice and the Continental, both rental buildings on the Avenue of the
In most buildings, however, either the service is free or the fee is nominal, maybe $10 a month. That small sum is mostly intended to discourage the leaving of unused and unusable bikes in storage ad infinitum, rather than to raise revenue.
“When you’re paying top dollar for a home,” said Mr. Kliegerman of Halstead, “you wouldn’t expect to pay to hang your bike on a wall.”
Many New Yorkers, of course, do surrender chunks of their living rooms to their two-wheelers. And they make do.
“People find all kinds of creative solutions,” said Richard Hamilton, a senior vice president aof Halstead Property. “I’ve seen bike pulleys that get them off the floor. In my old apartment, we put up hooks and hung them. Or you could lean it against the wall. And then it falls on you. And then you cuss.”
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