This 2011 article was originally published by The New York Times. Read the original article.
For her wedding over the weekend, Nina Johnson had worked through a predictable checklist of locations in town: hotel ballrooms, restaurant halls and catering outfits. In the end, though, she opted for the most glamorous, upscale and stylish setting she could find—a parking garage.
“When we saw it, we were in total awe,” said Ms. Johnson, 26, an art gallery director. “It’s breathtaking.”
Parking garages, the grim afterthought of American design, call to mind many words in association—rats, beer cans, unidentifiable smells—"breathtaking" is not usually among them.
Yet here in Miami Beach, whose aesthetic is equal parts bulging biceps and fluorescent pink, bridal couples, bar mitzvah boys and charity-event hosts are flocking to what seems like the unimaginable marriage of high-end architecture and car storage: a $65 million parking garage in the center of the city.
They are clamoring to use it for wine tastings, dinner parties, yoga classes, self-guided tours, snapping photographs and, at times, just gawking.