Seinfeld's Automotive Money Pit

MAY 27--One of New York City's longest-running (and problem-plagued) construction projects has finally been completed. That's right, after five long years, Jerry Seinfeld's private Manhattan garage is finally ready to receive a handful of cars from the Porsche-loving comedian's pricey automobile collection.

Seinfeld's multimillion-dollar renovation of a two-story building on West 83rd Street was completed late last month, according to an April 29 filing with the Department of Buildings. The 50-year-old performer purchased the property in March 1999 for $880,000 and almost immediately applied for demolition permits (the 16' x 52' building previously housed a plumbing & heating contractor). In what must now seem like wishful thinking, Seinfeld originally estimated the renovation at $500,000.

According to Buildings permits, Seinfeld's garage will hold only five cars (three on the ground floor, two in the basement), though his rides will bunk in style. According to a source who worked on the project (and gave TSG some pix taken during the project's latter stages), Jerry's garage is easily Gotham's swankiest car park. The floors are white terrazzo. The walls are covered with epoxy resin panels. Cabinetry, steel shelving, and the industrial elevator are all custom. Touch-screen panels on the wall control everything in the space.

Then there's Seinfeld's "little bachelor pad upstairs," as the worker described it. The 844-square-foot space has a kitchen, bathroom, large plasma screen TV, and a pool table. The television is actually the second set to be mounted in Jerry's pad--the original one was destroyed, the worker said, when some scaffolding slammed into it. After that mishap, workers quickly covered the pool table with a cardboard box and also made sure to protect the replacement plasma TV when it arrived at the garage.

That accident, the worker told TSG, was typical of the problems that turned the Seinfeld renovation into a five-year saga. "Nobody working there could figure out how the job was still going on after all those years," said the source, who added that there were upwards of 25 workers laboring in the small space during the project's final months.

Though many of those employees were clocking overtime, Seinfeld's automotive money pit won't leave much of a dent in his prodigious wallet. When TSG stopped by the garage this week, all signs of construction were gone--and we even said hello to Jerry when he happened to walk out the front door. (5 pages)