It is midnight on Central Park West. Edwin DeCastro, 41, a customer-service representative at PaineWebber, and his wife, Dr. Yolanda Aranguren-DeCastro, 37, a physician, have just discovered that they are out of disposable diapers and baby wipes. Does he dash down to Rite-Aid? No, he gets into his gold Grand Cherokee Laredo, with the serious roof rack, and makes an emergency run down the West Side Highway to Manhattan Mini Storage on 44th Street and 12th Avenue.
For the DeCastros, who buy in bulk at Costco, their rented mini-storage locker has become a combination spare room, linen closet and pantry. “We got married, combined two households, had a baby and rented a walk-in closet as a lifestyle enhancement,” he said.
The actress Sandra Bernhard knows from lack of space. “Honey, it’s part of life in New York,” she said, philosophizing over the differences between Los Angeles (roomy) and the Big Apple (cramped). “I live in an adorable studio apartment, and I never plan to move.” She jokingly said she considered bunking her newborn child in mini-storage. “It will sleep there with the nanny,” she continued. “So what if the lighting isn’t good? The baby is supposed to sleep, anyway. I’ll throw down a tarp, put an Easy Bake oven in so it smells like home and that’s all we need.”
Bernhard may not be alone in this kind of plan. Within the labyrinthine halls of the 12 buildings that Manhattan Mini Storage operates in New York are people desperately in need of a quiet place to think, or people like Mark Josefsberg, who needs a place to practice his vibraphone; people who need a place to change clothes on the way to work, people who don’t have room at home for an office. In a city that lacks privacy and personal space, people carve out a piece of mini-storage, put a padlock on it and call it home-away-from-home.
Jerry Gottesman, the chairman of Edison Properties, which owns Manhattan Mini Storage, said, “We try to provide a first-class environment for people to use for a variety of purposes.”
Meet Curtis Hay, whose vintage-clothing business outgrew his apartment. Meet the magician Arnie Kolodner, who moved his costumes and doves out of his bedroom and into mini-storage, where he vanishes for hours every other day to prepare his tricks. And meet Sandra Long, who sells exotic antiques to decorators from her large mini-storage room.
If people pay their monthly rent, the space is theirs — with few questions asked. The rules are straightforward: no sleeping in the unit, no food allowed. But Manhattan Mini Storage is a microcosm of New York, and New Yorkers (as Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has grumpily noted) do not like to follow rules. Some storage centers are open 24 hours, and a few noshers and snoozers are bound to slip in, along with people who keep late hours and have even stranger habits.
At 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, one man signed into the mini-storage building at 645 West 44th carrying a canvas duffel bag and a plastic milk crate. “He takes out his radio, sits down on his milk crate in front of the cubby and listens to music,” Vernon Randolph, the resident business manager, confided. “He comes in every night for a few hours and then leaves.” The man pays $58 a month for his pleasure, Randolph said. “He’s real private and keeps the music low and doesn’t bother anyone.”
David Whigham, assistant manager in that building, where 2,200 spaces rent from $45 to $630, understands the need for an extra room of one’s own — even a very small one. “Everyone needs a quiet place to collect his thoughts,” he said.
Whigham not only helps manage a mini-storage site, but has also been a client. “I was evicted from my apartment when my father died a few years ago,” he said. “I rented a storage room in another company’s building and put whatever I could carry into it.”
At the time, Whigham was a part-time actor and full-time college student. “Sure I sometimes slept there,” he said. “Where else could I go to be alone?” It was temporary; Whigham now lives alone in a two-bedroom apartment.
At least one resident manager lives in an apartment on the premises at each site. That is to make sure that clients do not. Some managers tell of the occasional person whose feet are found protruding into the hall. Eviction takes a month. But Manhattanites often think of mini-storage just as they would a weekend home — as a sanctuary, a place to tryst (two managers say they have walked in on couples coupling), to banish old towels, to putter around (hobbyists have installed workbenches). Or simply a place to catch a cool breeze. One woman reads in the air-conditioned splendor of her mini-storage room because her husband hates air-conditioning at home.
And like the best summer cottage, Room 01-11-19 on 645 West 44th Street has a view of the Intrepid Air, Sea and Space Museum and the Hudson River. Price: $91 a month.
All units must be secured with a padlock. There have been break-ins, the most dramatic of which, in 1995, resulted in $2 million worth of paintings being stolen; homeowner’s insurance may cover losses.
The units, which range in size from tiny lockers to capacious rooms 10 by 20 feet, might remind one of the cube-style hotel rooms seen during the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
Fluorescent lighting in the mini-storage rooms is top of the line; the alternative is peering into a dark unit from a lighted hallway. There are neither electrical outlets nor phone lines, but public toilets and soft-drink vending machines are down the hall.
A home office in such a spot would not raise an eyebrow. But Randolph remembers people who moved into their units lock, stock and Crate-and-Barrel chair. “Having people sleeping in here is bad for the morale of my other tenants,” he said.
Since many are open all night, there must be an occasional Irma la Ministorage. Management, however, denies it is a problem. “When I was an assistant manager on West 23rd Street, there was one lady who was a night worker,” Randolph said, referring to a prostitute who came in each night but just to change clothes. “As far as we were concerned she was a model citizen. We never saw her bringing company in.”
Low prices (starting at $29 a month on 134th Street at Riverside Drive and $77 at East 62d Street for a locker 4 by 4 by 4 feet) and short-term commitments make mini-storage an attractive nesting spot for retired rowing machines, as well as a magician’s tricks — and perhaps some live props. “I used to keep my tricks in the bedroom,” Arnie Kolodner said, referring to the levitating lady trick and a rabbit and dove he moves out of storage for his shows every other day. Though the trickmeister had an albino bunny and a white dove the day he was interviewed, he said they were “just visiting.”
Sandra Long, the owner of Anglo-Raj Antiques, buys Dutch colonial furniture from tea and cinnamon plantations in Ceylon and ships them straight to Manhattan Mini Storage on 11th Avenue and 29th Street, where decorator clients like Kevin Walz come despite the out-of-the-way location. Her room, which has 20-foot ceilings, rents for $450 a month. “There is free parking for customers,” she said. “And they think they’re getting a bargain.”
Kea Kilms operates out of the same building. The tiny space holds hundreds of antique rugs, all folded on rolling dollies. Susan Gomersall, who runs Kea with Richard Starna, used to keep the inventory in her apartment — a walk up. Now Kea enjoys the mini-storage loading dock and elevator.
In all, 10 companies run mini-storage spaces in Manhattan, Manhattan Mini Storage being the largest.
