You’ve finally brought home one too many Picassos. Now what?

The entry to Museo Vault is flanked by two small but sleek art galleries, with floor-to-ceiling windows facing NW 29th Street. Inside one are sculptures made from old drive-in movie speakers, staplers, radio parts. Viewed in this nicely air-conditioned space, the exhibit “Rocket Man” is pretty cool all around. It turns out to be a prescient preview to what stands behind the tightly sealed doors of the Vault.

The Museo Vault, opened this past November, is an art storage, services, and shipping facility. But that makes it sound prosaic. Unlike the intentionally retro “Rocket Man” in the front annex, this place is truly space-age.

After handing over ID to security, the first of many thick, heavily video-monitored doors opens, revealing five floors and 86,000-square-feet of state-of-the-art everything, or so it seems. There’s the handsome and expertly lit viewing room, where collectors, artists, and museum curators can show guests artwork in a posh setting. There’s the security-intense loading dock and also the crating and packing center, where craftsmen build customized shipping containers and insulated casings. Upstairs: color-coordinated storage and office rooms, and hanging panel spaces. The whole building is cocooned by a hyper climate- and humidity-controlled system, and happens to sit on some of the highest land in Miami.

That, at least, is according to the project’s founder and owner David Lombardi, a prominent developer in the Wynwood arts district. The elevation of the property is an extra bonus here in flood-prone hurricane alley, Lombardi points out as he maneuvers another high-tech entry into another part of the Vault. In fact all of this techno-gadgetry has a distinct purpose and makes a distinct statement: This is a unique art-services center, and it was built in Miami for a reason.

We have growing art collections and galleries, with increasingly important and expensive work, and handling all of it should not be left to amateurs, especially on this southern tip of Florida. That would be the thinking behind the $10 million facility for Lombardi, whose Wynwood Lofts were some of the first spaces built specifically for artists and artist studios, and which he says are now all occupied.

Lombardi explains how humidity and water are the worst enemies of art; so the humidity inside Museo Vault is constantly monitored with 50 sensors, and water sprinklers will only activate in very targeted areas in case of fire. The lights are covered in UV protection sleeves, and the entire building has a back-up power system to keep those climate and security controls running even if a dreaded hurricane should hit. Says Lombardi: “It provides a [new] infrastructure for Miami.”

That safety structure is especially necessary here in Florida, according to Jane Hart, curator of exhibitions at the Art and Culture Center Hollywood. “Even compared to a similar place like L.A., our humidity and salt are brutal here,” she says. “Serious collectors need a serious storage space.” Hart points out that as household collections have grown along with the status of art, “people have more stuff in their homes than they can handle. It’s become popular to rotate your collection, and it is now very important to safely store what you are not showing.”

There’s more to the facility than doors and climate, says a proud Lombardi on this hot spring afternoon. “We have the best people providing the services.” Almost on cue, Alan Myers, the fine arts collection manager, steps out of an elevator. He had served a 17-year stint at the Whitney Museum in New York before coming to Miami. Lombardi remarks that Myers had just changed the protective plastic covering on a painting, and Myers explains that leaving it on too long can cause harm. He gets very personal with the art, even visiting a collector’s home first to get to know it and then “figure out the best way to store it.”

Hands-on care extends to the crating and shipping side of the business as well. There are legion shipping disaster tales, of art arriving late for an opening, and worse, arriving damaged or half dismantled. And packaging contemporary art is no small task — pieces can include room-size installations, delicate rice paper, glass sculptures. From the back of the huge crating room, one carpenter remembers trying to transport an enormous metal sculpture from the artist Britto, which he said eventually had to involve forklifts.

Security measures at the Vault include confidentiality about what art is already in storage and who owns it — Lombardi and his staff don’t want to give potential thieves any extra information. But a major Miami collector, Dennis Scholl, doesn’t have to follow a similar vow of silence. He was recently named Miami program director for the Knight Foundation, which includes leading the $40 million Knight Arts Challenge; and parts of the collection he created with his wife Debra currently are showing in an exhibition at the Frost Art Museum at FIU. “I can’t imagine a better place to have important objects if you want them protected,” he says. “The space is world-class — well thought out, organized, and ready to handle almost any kind of art object. It’s a dramatic upgrade from existing facilities.”

But while many seem to agree there is a need for such up-to-date services, even Lombardi acknowledges the timing might be off. “Unfortunately,” he says, “we opened just as the recession hit the art market.” The occupancy rate is not nearly as high as he had hoped at this point, and they are not running at full capacity in terms of services, “but we’ll wait it through, like everyone else.”

A potential client arrives to take a tour. If Lombardi’s dream succeeds, the client might be one who catalogues his collection using the viewing room as camera-ready documenting space, and in the future will log-on on the Vault’s secured Website to check out his artworks, or show them to others, maybe while he’s in Paris.

“It is a high-quality project, and anything of high quality gets high marks from me,” says Michelle Weinberg, local artist and director of the Girls’ Club, a private art foundation and alternative art space. “But obviously the economy at this moment may make it a challenge to launch.”

Scholl says that Museo Vault’s presence means more than merely additional storage space: “This concept is another statement about Miami’s position as an important city in the art world. We’re one of the largest collecting cities in America now. It’s an amazing facility, and I do hope they do well.”