Is Bike Storage an Obsolete Amenity?

Back in the springtime, bike storage rooms were “the hot new amenity.” Then Donald Trump got elected president, and Secret Service agents and tourists began to swarm around his home address at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. This nuisance gave real estate brokers the inspiration to start touting a slightly more counter-intuitive amenity. They started calling Trump Tower “the most secure building in Manhattan.”

The amenities race in co-ops and condos clearly is in a constant state of flux. As 2016 drew to a close, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Citi Bike riders took 14 million trips during the year, “shattering the record set in 2015 by more than 4 million,” Gothamist reports. Your co-op or condo board might want to rethink those plans to install the “hot new amenity” of a bike storage room. Maybe this amenity is going the way of the laundry room. Maybe you should start thinking about baby stroller storage. Or automated car parking. Or hiring some off-duty Secret Service agents to beef up security.

De Blasio, for one, couldn’t be happier about Citi Bike’s success. "In 2016, we fulfilled our pledge to grow Citi Bike, a sustainable transit option, to a range of more diverse Manhattan and Brooklyn communities – from upper Manhattan to Red Hook," the Mayor said. "New Yorkers in these communities really took to Citi Bike, further cementing its reputation as the nation’s largest popular bike-share program. With more Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods slated to get bikes in 2017, we can continue to expect great things."