Jeff Badger is basing the decor of his garage on Old London, replicating locations from the city. Photo by N. Bye
by Robert Rozboril
After a few design tweaks to comply with city fire codes, the second phase of the Club Motor Estates develop ment project is underway in Broadview Heights.
“The best way to describe Club Motor Estates is a yacht club for car collectors,” said company president Jeffrey Badger. “You buy a garage condo, or ‘crib’ as some might want to call it, you decorate it and then you join the club.”
Badger said Phase Two will entail the building of 46 new “garage condominiums” covering a total of 50,000 square feet. Garage condominiums are a brand new building concept, according to Bad ger, which makes applying traditional building codes somewhat tricky.
“It’s kind of the same problem you see bed and breakfasts run into,” Badger said. “Is it a residential property being put to commercial use or a commercially-zoned property being used for residential pur poses?”
Rather than quibbling over semantics, Badger and his team of engineers and architects found ways to adjust original plans for the expansion in order to ensure that fire trucks would have 360-degree access to all buildings on the site and, sub sequently, got the approval of Broadview Heights city council at its June 27 meet ing to move forward with Phase Two.
To demonstrate how seriously Badger takes the matter of safety, he pointed out that his plans call for thick firewalls to be incorporated between units as well as sprinkler systems.
In addition to two buildings worth of new car-centric condos, the second phase includes the addition of a new parking lot, a pond, a gated entrance, storm drains, underground electrical lines and the conversion of the site from a septic system to a sewer system.
“I don’t think I want 150 toilets flushing at the same time into a septic system,” Badger said, with a laugh.
The club’s 15,000 square feet of garage condos built during Phase One have sold out, and the same is true for about half of the Phase Two condos. Once 75 percent of the Phase Two condos are occupied, the third phase will begin. Phase Three will include the construction of the final three buildings of the $25 million, seven building project.
Phase One also included the building of a grand ballroom and a 3,500-square-foot clubhouse. Construction began in the fall of 2015 at 1000 Edgerton Road, just east of Broadview Road and the Ohio Turnpike. The BroadViewJournal, August 2016