Finish Line Auto Club is adding a third location, this one in Calabasas, to its roster of facilities that allow car enthusiasts to store their luxury cars. The 32,000-square-foot facility is built with the collector in mind, providing a safe space for their vehicles, but also a country club experience.
Located 19 miles from Malibu and 24 miles from Beverly Hills, the facility was designed for car collectors to have a place to house their vehicles and build a community of like-minded people. The Calabasas facility will include 19 garage rental units running 1,200 to 2,400 square feet in size. Units can also be combined to form larger garages. Security is a priority, so the area is gated, has heavy surveillance, and car owners have their own private entrances.
Full circle
Tony Principe, principal and president of Westcord Commercial Real Estate Services, developed the idea after looking for a place to store his own car collection. In the mid-2000s, he and his father, Rick Principe (Westcord’s chief executive), bought a 40,000-square foot industrial building in Ventura County. “We cleaned it all up and fixed it up, put a condo map on it, and wound up selling probably 80% of it to car guys, which we weren’t expecting,” Tony Principe said. “It wasn’t the plan, but it just wound up going to a lot of friends and people that were all car people. That launched the brainstormed idea of us doing a Finish Line Auto Club-type of concept.”
Tony Principe, alongside his father, has been involved in the car community his whole life and loves that he can combine his passion for car collecting and real estate in Finish Line Auto.
The land in Calabasas was purchased more than over 11 years ago, and while waiting for the entitlement process to run its course, Tony Principe and his father developed and built a facility in Westlake Village, and then another in Costa Mesa, both 80,000-square-foot complexes. Unlike their Ventura County location, these two come with a variety of perks and amenities.
“The first one didn’t have security, didn’t have a clubhouse, didn’t have gates,” Tony said. “So, the new one that we did in Westlake has all those amenities – private clubhouse, indoor and outdoor patio area, security, and surveillance.”
The Costa Mesa facility started out as an 80,000-square-foot center, but the Principes’ plan to expand it by another 20,000 to 23,000 square feet was approved by the city June 27. Each location has improved from the last, evolving into much more than parking garages.
Although the Calabasas facility will be smaller in size compared to the other locations, that is where the differences end.
“It’s much smaller. It’s about 32,000 square feet, whereas Westlake is 80,000 feet. Orange County will be about 105,000 feet, and Palm Desert will be about 110,000 square feet. S But other than that, it will be just as nicely amenitized for the owners as our other projects,” Tony Principe said.
“It’s kind of ironic because we had waited so many years to do that as our first one,” Tony said. “[Calabasas has] become more of a boutique facility. It will be very upscale with high security.”
Building Community
The facilities are built with car collectors in mind, and are far more than a parking garage, according to Tony.
“Our facilities are built and deed-restricted just to car collectors, so you cannot have any business inside those facilities,” Tony said. “We typically like a highly secured environment.”
Once someone owns or rents a space at a Finish Line Auto facility, they are granted access to events hosted at other sites, like unveilings of automobiles. The developers declined to disclose purchase or rental prices.
“Porsche in Westlake or in Orange County, we have Bugatti and McLaren, and other car companies who want to do and host special events for our owners at these facilities,” Tony Principe said. “We have speakers that come out and talk to the owners, well-known people in the automotive world.”
Garage owners or renters have special access to customer services, and retailers. Tony Principe said his favorite part of Finish Line is the community that is built among car enthusiasts who connect over their love for vehicles.
“We have a small community with a lot of amenities to that community that you wouldn’t have in a normal industrial building or warehouse,” he said. “People become very close friends with other people in the facilities, which has been nice. We’re very private and exclusive and we intend to keep it that way.”