Some New Yorkers call 300 square feet their home — this exec calls it her closet.
Talent and marketing exec Lori Levine has a walk-in closet the same size as the “micro units” Mayor Bloomberg is proposing to build to create more affordable housing.
For someone used to spreading out in a 1,400-square-foot, two-bedroom pad just off Union Square, the city’s tiny apartment proposal is terrifying.
“Don’t they give bigger rooms to people in asylums?” the single Levine asked.
“If you are giving more room to people who are crazy, I don’t think you want to be in the space that will make you go crazy.”
Still, the CEO of Flying Television, a celebrity-marketing, events and p.r. firm, says she can sympathize with the trials of living in a space that’s smaller than some pizza shops.
She once lived in a 450-square-foot apartment with her then-boyfriend — and a Murphy bed.
The kitchen was too small for a chair, and the stove was too small for more than one pot at a time.
“The only place for total privacy was to sit in the bathroom to read a book if my boyfriend was watching TV,” she recalled.
Neither the apartment nor the boyfriend lasted.
“Forget 411, 511 and 911. I think there will need to be a direct dial to Bellevue for these couples who are buying the apartments,” she quipped.
She did concede that the units could “give people a leg up to get into Manhattan.”
Still, making small spaces feel cozy, not cramped, can be done, said Ace Hotel designer Abigail Ahern, who helped create a “mini-room” option with a full-size bed and 140 to 200 square feet.
The “biggest trick,” Ahern said, is painting everything — ceilings, walls, doors, moldings — the same color.
Mirrors expand a room, small furniture does not, she said. “Playing around with scale is the biggest understated way to make a place feel bigger,” she said.