In another sign of the self-storage sector’s recent surge, a San Fernando Valley developer is requesting a zone change and other approvals to expand a facility already under construction in Van Nuys.
Gregg Buskett, who operates Buskett Development Group, filed the planning application in late June.
“There’s a genuine need in that area,” Buskett said. “I think every other [facility] within five miles is 97 percent occupied.”
He added that he was building “a state-of-the-art facility” — the kind of clean, safe place where “you would let your wife go and get stuff out of the storage.”
Construction is already underway based on the city’s approval of a 2018 application. But now Buskett intends to expand the plans to add an additional 80,000 square feet, creating a three-story, 220,000-square-feet facility that should be completed in three years, he said.
For the expansion, the developer must raze 10 residential units, according to the application; the project is also seeking a zone change to reduce parking requirements and a conditional use permit that would allow it to go within 500 feet of a residential zone, among other entitlements.
The property is located in the 6000 block of Woodley Avenue, a couple blocks east of the Van Nuys Airport. In the application, Buskett said the upgraded self-storage facility would provide a “buffer between the nearby residential zones … and the more intensive industrial and manufacturing uses to the west.”
The plans offer further evidence of the strong position self storage commands in the L.A. commercial market. Throughout the pandemic the sector emerged as a bright spot as locked-down residents sought to clear out crowded homes and convert spare rooms or garages into home offices. In 2021 occupancy rates at self-storage facilities nationally jumped to 95 percent, according to data from the Self-Storage Almanac, four points higher than the pre-pandemic figure. The average monthly cost on a 10-foot by 10-foot unit rose more than 10 percent. Share prices for national storage companies soared. Industry giant Public Storage, headquartered in Glendale, has gained nearly 48 percent since the start of 2020.
Even in the face of this year’s troubling economic headwinds, the sector has proved resilient. Earlier this spring, as some companies moved to bring employees back — and some of those employees downsized from their spacious but more rural pandemic homes — the sector saw another boom, and analysts predict it will remain relatively recession-proof.
“When people think of commercial real estate, they think of apartments and office buildings,” Juan Sanabria, managing director of BMO Capital Markets, previously told The Real Deal, “but storage has proven to be a great business.”
Greater L.A. is at the forefront of the surge. According to a RentCafe analysis published last month , which used figures from the commercial real estate data company Yardi Matrix, more than 130 million square feet of new storage space is in the works across the U.S., representing a 9 percent increase in the country’s inventory. More than 6.3 million square feet of that total is planned for L.A., more than any other metro market except New York.
The plans have been materializing all over Greater L.A. Last fall Baranof Holdings, a Dallas-based developer that already owned one self-storage facility in Inglewood, filed an application to build a 142,000-square-foot complex in the Central L.A. neighborhood of Pico Union. In December Trojan Storage, a Redondo Beach-based developer, filed plans to build a similarly sized complex in Sylmar that would be surrounded by 27 one and two-bedroom apartments. This spring Insite filed plans for a four-story facility near Downtown L.A., while the multifamily and mixed-use firm LaTerra Development — after announcing it would spend as much as $300 million in a splashy move into self storage — filed to build facilities in Mar Vista and North Hollywood, among others.
The Van Nuys site that would host Buskett Development’s expansion consists of multiple parcels. Property records indicate that Buskett acquired two, which total about 0.3 acre, for $3.4 million in January. The homes on those properties were built in the 1950s and modified in the late 1970s.
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