Ken Hackett watched with interest when Lamborghini of Naples opened late last year in East Naples. The buyers there looked like potential new clients for Prima Auto Condos, a planned luxury vehicle condominium complex.
Prima Auto Condos started taking reservations and already has sold 10 of 33 units, said Hackett, a Naples resident. They will be located at 9004 Tamiami Trail E., and construction should begin later this year.
Primal Partners LLC is the name of the company behind the project, and it includes co-Chairman Tony Pompeo.
“This project is one of the most demanding and fulfilling that we have worked on in our 40 years in the business,” said Pompeo, a longtime real estate developer from Pittsburgh. “We believe we will have among the best units built to date.”
Pricing begins at $528 per square foot. At 1,750 square feet or 2,125 square feet, both sizes of which include a mezzanine, that amounts to $924,000 or $1,122,000.
The complex will total 65,000 square feet and be built on 5 acres adjacent to Treviso Bay Club and Isles at Collier Preserve.
Construction is slated to begin in the fall, company officials said.
Units will be large enough for some recreational vehicles, and they are customizable.
Nardi Realty is managing sales, with James Pilkington and Cameron Murray working as sales associates.
Primal Partners purchased 10 acres for $5.5 million, Hackett said. It’s a prime location, he said, just 5 miles from downtown Naples.
The rear 5 acres will be the auto condos, while the U.S. 41 frontage eventually will be developed into commercial retail space, Hackett said, perhaps two years from now.
“With the location and the cost of land and so forth, what we wanted to do is create a benchmark,” Hackett said. “We certainly have the best of the best in the current marketplace.”
The auto condo trend continues to grow. Hackett said he knew one developer in Scottsdale, Arizona, who has built 600 auto condo units.
Hackett, who worked for The New York Times in building its national edition from 1984 to 2002, became a car collector himself for a few years, purchasing vintage Volkswagens until selling them.
“It’s an addictive thing,” Hackett said. “The truth is, the more you dig into it, the more fascinating it becomes. I’ve known people who have owned four or five of these in different states. Their only issue is, they can’t buy their next car until they know where they’re going to put it.”
This will be Hackett’s first auto condo project, he said, and likely not his last.
“We’re already looking at other properties,” Hackett said. “We know the drill now. We have a great architect, and we’ve got builders lined up.”
