Hello, my name is Jamie Lindau and I'm
the Sales Manager of Trachte Building Systems. Today we're going to be doing
this informational video on what are typical mistakes in self storage
development. What you see behind me is a truck ready to go out. Your building is
ordered and it's going to be delivered today. The real truth is most likely
you've already made a mistake before the building even gets there. You have made a whole
number of mistakes with the building and the site layout that you know you might
not even realize. So what we're gonna do is backtrack from this point and look at
some of the items you have to look at. Before you actually order your building
and get it to make sure you don't have problems and mitigate some of your
problems with your facility. Before you begin but the absolute most important
aspect of your entire facility is your site location and when you're trying to
determine your location these are the mistakes that I typically see. First of
all you look at a parcel like this one is for sale. One of the things is how
large is the site that you have. This one is a fairly small one. It's only two
acres and with the only two acres you can only get drive-up units. 30,000
square feet for example. That's really not enough to have a office. You would
have to do it remotely. A lot of people- what they regret is that they don't get
enough land and so you know some sites get thrown out right away because
they're not large enough. The other thing you have to verify is that you have
the correct zoning. The absolute most important, because will the city let you
build it here. This location right here is on a minor road. And right behind in
front of me is a major road that bisects an interstate. This is freaking perfect except that you know you got to make sure that the city will allow you to build it here.
So you got a check zoning and then the site size to make sure you can phase it
large enough to make your project big enough to handle it if you're gonna do
it remotely. You can have a small site do you what want. For an office manager you're gonna need three or four acres unless you go multi-story and you can do a couple
acres and then you look at phasing the property. So the site location by far
because the thing that you're gonna find out building a mini storage is roughly
the same price across the country. What you get as far as your rental rates are
and you know how fast you run up it's all based on your location. So that's the
number one key. As we're still on the topic of your land that you're looking
to develop you know this self storage behind me it's not just where the
buildings lie and where your drivers are going to be. There's going to be a whole
portion of your land that you're not going to be able to use because it's
going to be a retention detention pond. Because what happens is you have to have
all the water stay out your property now. If you look at this site behind me you
didn't realize that he had to have this massive retention pond to hold all the
water and that takes up a huge amount of space. This could take up to an acre of land so you have to take that into account when you're figuring out the size. And the
thing another mistake people do is they will lay out their entire property
without figuring out where this location of the retention pond is. So that's why
getting your site engineer involved right away to determine how large a pond
you need and where its location would be. Then you work on your site layout to
make sure it is correct and then how do we drain into it how? Do we mitigate any
water problems? That's one of the critical mistakes people have that you
can't fix later. You'll look to buy a property. You wonder why it's being sold.
A lot of times because it has water problems. So one of the very important
keys to a successful self storage. We've talked a little bit about the land
and I'm a huge fan of phasing a project. Not building too much at one time. If you
did do anything. A lot of times you put more foundations in ahead and don't
build all the buildings at one time. Because then you can change your unit
mix and then you have all the excavation, everything done. But if you are able
to buy a very large parcel it might behoove you or be a good idea to have the
whole site graded at the first time or at least a majority of it so that you
have a lot of room to do some outside parking and RV storage. Now this
what you're seeing over here you can make some income on it. There is
typically not enough of this out there in the in the world. You don't make as
much money as what you do with the regular building but boy it's helping to
offset you know the cost of the land and everything. So now there used to be RVs
parked here but we moved them out because right here is where the next
building is going in so then you're able to adjust the unit mix. For example this
building here is going to have a lot more five by tens. I really didn't
believe I would need them in a smaller town but they are renting because of all
the apartments built in town. So I was even surprised but you need to have a
spot. And it's going to be very easy to put the foundation in and the only
reason I'm not putting another one is because I don't want to lose any of the
RV spaces. Because they're already rented. So phasing is great to adjust your unit
mix to what people want and also you protect yourself because I'm already up
to the level I'm paying for the project and it's a more conservative approach.
One of the other minor things that happens periodically with people doing
site layouts is that they'll make a dead-end driveway. We're seeing a small example of it here
where you drive in but how is somebody going to get out. You're expecting them
to back out. Well, the problem is that they will try to turn around because we
don't know. We don't know how to back up anymore and so they will try to turn
around. If they do, they'll probably damage your building. So this is one
thing you try to avoid if you can with your layout. When you layout your site
the thing is you have to figure out where a gate is gonna be. And many times
you're building a small site you aren't even gonna put a gate in. But it doesn't
really matter whether you're gonna put a gate in now or later you should figure
it out. Because this example right behind me is somebody that decided to add a
gate later. Now what they what is done well is that from the keypad to the gate
is about 20 feet. That's good. You want over 15 feet so it has time to open. But
it's weird how you have some of the unit's outside the gate and some of the
unit's inside the gate. That doesn't work. You know that's not a normal situation.
But here's they had to make some adjustments. So you always want to plan
your gate right up front to make sure you get it properly positioned. Now we're
at an example of a different site that one of the things you look at is they
you have plenty of distance for your vehicle to get off the road before they
get to the keypad. And that because this had such a large front setback it really
wasn't a problem. Now the other thing you have with your keypad is that you have
bollards protecting it so people don't run into it. And if you'll notice the
bollard stick out just a little bit of front of the actual keypad and because
there's access a little bit behind me put a bollard in the back so somebody
doesn't actually turn around here or something and hit the bollard. The other
thing with the gates people have asked me what size gate to you need, you know
what other accessories you might want. One of the things I do like to have is a
separate access gate. Where is you can physically walk through.
You can lock it if you need to. Now again here you protect it. Okay.
This gate now this gate is 20 feet wide. That's typically the widest you do. Some
people have done to 24 but I like 20 feet. But a lot of people use a 16 foot
gate and I this one is 20 because there's a lot of RVs here so they have
to make sure that there's plenty of swing distance in here. And so the key
though that you're looking at right here is that I can go in to the office
without going through the gate. That's a major mistake if you do it. So that when
new people come they rent from the office we go there before they go
through the gate and that's a big no-no if you if you put the gate outside the
office. Hi, I'm at a facility that was built 27 years ago. And 27 years ago we
didn't worry so much about where the water was draining. Everybody always did
gable buildings but these buildings are orientated going east and west and when
you have a building going east and west. Here is the south side of the property
or the building. Now you get plenty of sun you'll melt the snow and ice very
good. But as I go into the shade here, this is now the north side of the
property. It is late October and winter is coming
and when winter comes snow is gonna fall. Water is gonna drip off this roof and
you're gonna have a bunch of ice here on the whole north side of the property. You
can also see that there was mold growing because it never gets sun. So you try to
mitigate water coming on the north side of the property. So if we would be
building this one today I would have them all lean-to to the south. No water
draining on the north. It also saves your pavement so you don't have any dripping
on it. So that is one of the big things your building orientation to make sure
you mitigate those problems. The other thing this building has is a
number of step downs because it falls towards the front of the property. And a
trick we're doing today is putting them on a 1% slope. This is a hundred and
fifty foot long building and we could have dropped a foot and a half. And you
have to one foot steps I bet you I could have redone this site so you had no step
downs and look at the prop you would have mitigated these things and it would
have been so much easier to snowplow. So those are two things we would have done
differently today to make your project less problems, less maintenance and a
better product overall and you have to figure that out in the beginning while
you're doing your development process. Behind me is a lean-to building where
the water and there is a downspout is draining to the west. Now the west gets
plenty of sun later in the day like it is today and the east won't have any
water draining on it. As you look to this building over here you will see there a
high rake trim to make it look closed off but there's no water draining here
you're not going to have a problem. The other thing people talk to me a lot
about: Should I use asphalt or concrete drive? Asphalt drive is the norm in our
industry. It is good in the wintertime because it absorbs sun and melts ice and
it is less expensive but for maintenance issues you know concrete is
longer-lasting and that's what I'm doing on this particular site. But it is not
the norm. Normally it is asphalt. But typically when you go for your approvals
they're going to not let you have it gravel. They normally make you pave it
one way or the other. A mistake that you will see on a large number of
self-storage facilities is that they foundation wasn't poured exactly perfect. And you will have this metal building
going past the concrete. Now Trachte we add one or more inch on both sides and
what you love to have is this situation where the building is recessed from the
concrete or a driveway. Normally, I do not like to see it flat where there is no
step down to whatsoever. This is about an inch and a half. That is pretty much the
minimum you would have. Some people like two and a half inches because it helps
as a barrier for ice that it doesn't get into the unit but you wouldn't want it
flush if you can help it. Hi, this 27 year old project that I'm
standing on they put corner posts in when they originally built. These are
6-inch post four feet high four feet in the ground. Notice this trim. This is the
same trim we supplied 27 years ago. They never had to fix it. Why? Because they put
the corner posts in. Okay. By preventative doing it all four corners you mitigate
your problems in the future. So this was one of the things you have to do to
protect your buildings. Okay, right now I'm at a 20 year old facility built in
1999 and this facility did not put any corner posts on it. Okay, I'm just on one
of the corners every single corner has been hit. The jam is busted, they busted the
rake trim, they busted everything. What you need to do is have a corner post
down here and I haven't crushed their car not your building. When you have
exterior lights on your building one of the main things you want to do is hide
the conduit. But I cannot stand because they have the conduit exposed. There's
absolutely no reason to do this. You should have it all on the inside of the
building. One of the major regrets people have
when their site is successful is that they wish they would have bought a built
a better office. So one of the my opinions is if you
can't build the office you really want right away
don't build any at all leave the space open till you get enough money then to
build the correct office. The other times that people kind of make too small of an
office and so and they regret it later and then it's so hard to change. So
behind me here's an office that's accomplishing multiple things. Where the
person is having it so it can be remotely run because there's a kiosk in
it. It looks impressive that people can be here but that isn't always manned. And
you want that good view from the street and make sure everybody understands that
you are a self-storage facility. One of the things people regret is they don't
leave a vestibule in here to have your kiosk. I'm a fan of kiosks and I like that it is
in a climate-controlled environment. This door is open 24 hours a day and the
people could use it. I haven't had many issues with the kiosks because it's in a
heated and cooled environment and you know American society is getting so used
to doing them things themselves. So I think it's a part of the future. And then
when you have your office you just go through the next door to come into your
office. And if you've looked at some of my other videos I've always liked
cameras because I believe cameras are real security for your site. That here
I'm phasing the sight but I'm actually putting three TVs on because later in
the phase I'm gonna add even more televisions but I mean we're cameras so
I have the television already set up in it. And one of the things that I like
you'll see a lot is that you do your business standing up. That you have
people stand up to rent your units. So there's many different looks and
whatever your personal tastes are but if you make it nice. That's the expectation
today in our self-storage facilities. One of the things that I really like is that
the climate control section is connected to the office and you have a window so
you can see down the hallway if there's any problems. And there is a bunch of
other little items that you like to have in your office that people wish you know
they would do a little differently. The bathroom which I already mentioned and
then here's a little breakfast nook kind of hidden. Some people put offices in but
a lot of times for our owner managers that we have where people are running
the business themselves they wish they'd have their own man cave I call it or
their own operational room. And what the key is is if you can have a
heat it you're gonna use it and you might do something special like a 20
foot wide bay something you don't normally do with itself starts because
it's for me and I like to have you know a couple sinks, water to be able to do
whatever I'm gonna do I have no idea in my retirement but this is what I'll be
playing around it. So I don't classify this is a mistake.
But figure out what type of office you'll use and don't cheat the space
just for one more unit because later on if the site's big enough you'll kind of
regret it. You wish you would've gave up that unit just to have more room for
yourself. Just something to think about. Well, I know you're all looking to get
into the self-storage industry and reading articles, looking at videos to
figure out what you should or shouldn't do.
And I hope I've given you some guidance on it but in my 35 plus years
in this industry I see the same things people say. One - I wish I would have got
into it sooner. Two - I wish I would have bought more land and three - I wish I
would have made my gate, office, front entrance better and so if you got those
you're at least ahead of the game. Now when you do develop, you'll always make a
mistake. I do every time. You try to minimize them to the best you can to
make a good project. There's a lot of good resources out there with
feasibility people, the Inside Self Storage Association, their trade shows
where a lot of people want you to be successful because everyone wants
everyone else to be successful. You do not want somebody build a bad facility
because then they're going to do what none of us like - discount the price. We want you to be successful and not just the lowest price guy in town. That's
not how the whole industry is going. So I hope you enjoyed this video and
I wish you good luck in all your self-storage endeavors.
