Building a dream, he hits rock
“I really wanted a garage,” says Stephen Grisanti.
Illustration by John Ashton Golden
“My passion has always been cars,” says the Mount Vernon native, ever upwardly mobile since his first set of wheels at 16, a $400 Pinto. That was nearly 40 cars ago. “When I lived in Rye, me not having a garage was kind of like Julia Child not having a kitchen.”
We gaze upon a high, barnlike garage of dark cedar attached to his replica colonial home in Somers. A Model-T-era auto swings slightly in a spring breeze on the weathervane atop a cupola. The garage”™s handmade wooden doors, built by Grisanti”™s cousin with lumber from his one-man sawmill upstate, are closed.
“That was one of the reasons we moved here,” he says. Not to hide his cars, but to house them. To give them a clean, well-lighted place, the overhead track-lights treatment they deserve. “I wanted to build a special garage,” he says.
“I”™ve been a Porsche enthusiast since I was a young kid. The first Porsche I had seen was in Mount Vernon when I was 14 years old. It was a guy who delivered chickens ”“ from Chicken Delight.” You never forget a chicken that arrives in a Porsche.
On the front lawn, a landscaping crew prepares plantings. They get lunch from the homeowner, but no peek at his vintage Porsches.
They”™re not “garage queens” that never leave their throne room to hazard the outdoors, with its falling branches and dusty pollen and too-tight-for-comfort restaurant parking lots. Grisanti voices mild scorn for “garage queens.” Still, a man”™s love affair with his Porsches is quite private.
“I don”™t buy them for investments. I buy them because I love them,” he says. (Not that they”™re a bad investment: his ”™68 Porsche 912 coupe has doubled in value since he paid $48,000 for it.) It”™s not a love he flaunts at car shows or in front of hired help.
Three mint-condition cars, perfectly shined with toothbrush precision and obsessive attention to detail. It”™s what you”™d expect of the guy who founded Classic Shine Auto Fitness Center in his early twenties. It”™s what you might expect of a drummer in a band ”“ 60 to 70 gigs a year back in the day ”“ whose frequent, even fanatical, polishing of his cymbals inspired his next business gig, Greenwich Metal Finishing.
“I”™m not just a neat freak, I”™m an extreme”¦” The right word is as hard to find as a dust bunny in Grisanti”™s domain. “I made most of my success built on my fanaticism.”
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His Greenwich businesses are owned by others now. “I didn”™t want to own my own business anymore,” he says. “It owns you when you build a successful business.” For nine years he has run an office and real estate business as operations and leasing director for a midtown Manhattan law firm.
It was at the firm that Grisanti learned of an estate closing in Somers about four years ago. The seller had kept one lot out of the deal. “I was very lucky,” says Grisanti, who spent seven months getting needed approvals of the sale from the colleges that were bequeathed the property.
Grisanti and his wife, Brigitte Milian, in 2008 sold their saltbox house in Rye at $300,000 less than its price before the housing bust. “We just missed that window, but we got out,” he says.
Of three bidders on the Somers land, only Grisanti bid as is. “You never bid a property ”˜as is,”™ because you might hit rock,” he says.
That”™s hard-earned wisdom. His piece of Somers sits on a rock ledge. “I probably spent about $150,000 to $160,000 just to deal with rock.”
Working with close friends and family relations in the building trades, the couple built their 2,500-square-foot house for less than $500,000. “It”™s an authentic 17-century, center chimney colonial,” with some modern materials and design changes, says Grisanti. “It”™s kind of like a blue blazer ”“ a colonial house will never go out of style.”
Grisanti was his own general contractor, walking the lot in boots at 5 a.m. before catching the train to the city. During the day, his wife, laid off from her financial services job, oversaw the project from an office on the site. At night, the couple inspected the day”™s work by flashlight. In their temporary home, Grisanti organized the project on three work tables and applied his extreme neat-freak brain to details. “People say, ”˜Grisanti has a budget for his budget,”™” he says. “I”™m a budget nut.”
“Everybody who builds a house or does a renovation talks about what a nightmare it is. We built this house in less than seven months and it was one of the best experiences we ever had.”
“Il mio signo,” reads the sign that hangs high from his garage. “My dream.”
“Before it said, ”˜my dream garage,”™” Grisanti says. “But I had to make it from a six to a two-car garage because of rock issues. So it”™s really not my dream garage.” Grisanti removed the Italian word for garage from the sign.
Still, it”™s like Julia Child getting her kitchen. “I waited a long time to have it,” Grisanti says of his garage with track lights. “My wife says, ”˜Are you going to kiss your cars tonight?”™”
It”™s a ritual with him. “Every night, I open the door and look in,” he says. “When you don”™t have it, you appreciate it. I feel lucky.”
“They smell different, every one of them.” Like your kids.