Self-Storage Industry Grows and Puts on Some Fancy Airs

Self-storage facilities have long been thought of as those places where people squirrel away all the stuff that they don’t have room for but just can’t seem to part with.

Not so, says John Logan, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany.

“People hanging on to things is what shows up more in people’s garages and attics,” Logan says. “Keeping things for a long time for nothing more than personal attachment is a luxury. What you find in self-storage facilities are more basic things that people need to keep. When people are actually paying for space, they’re more likely to keep only stuff they need.”

This attitude is responsible for an evolution of sorts in the self-storage industry, which has begun offering something more sophisticated and secure than a simple space with a lock.

“We’re not just self-storage operators; we’re storage consultants,” says Jim Chiswell, vice president of the Sovran Group in Williamsville, N.Y., which manages 33 self-storage facilities nationwide.

A self-storage unit these days might be lighted and climate-controlled. The operator may provide pickup and delivery and computerized surveillance systems. Some even have copy and facsimile machines on the site and are enhanced by landscaping.

“In the past, security and lighting were not big issues, and the quality of management was not good,” Chiswell said. “Now the focus is shifting to the professional,” Chiswell said.

Self-storage is now a $4-billion-a-year industry. Whereas there were about 3,500 of the structures across the nation a decade ago, there are about 20,000 of them now, industry representatives say. The idea has even spread to Canada, Europe and Australia.

Oldtimers in the industry say that self-storage started about 40 years ago, but there is no agreement on exactly where.

“It’s believed the industry started in Texas, but there’s evidence of it in Florida and Utah in the 1950s,” says Hardy Good, publisher of Mini Storage Messenger, a trade magazine published in Phoenix.

Some claim that such storage has become such an integral part of American life that you can mark the changes of the seasons by the comings and goings at the facilities.

“In the spring, you see trailers pull up with snow blowers and skis, and out comes the back-yard furniture,” Chiswell said. “In New York City, you can judge the change in seasons by women taking out huge garment bags of clothes that they can’t store in their small apartments.”

Indeed, self-storage operators say, most business in the early years was from people storing household goods such as kitchen appliances, sports equipment and assorted gadgets they never used but could not bear to throw away. But with the trend toward smaller houses and apartments and buildings that lacked attics, basements and even garages, the industry has boomed.