Domain takes a tour of this award winning 27 metre apartment in Sydney's Darlinghurst.
- The jaw-dropping penthouse in New York City’s tallest residential building
- Sydneysiders: Which New York neighbourhood is right for you?
- The man renting one of the world’s smallest properties: a crawl space in New York City
Sally Lesser really needs a bigger apartment. Instead, she has a storage unit.
Into her 6.5 square-metre nook goes everything she cannot cram into the one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn Heights she shares with her husband: out-of-season clothing, old files and Christmas ornaments, playbills from long-ago shows, even their grown son’s childhood toys. All for $US275 ($362) a month.
“We could not live without our storage unit,” said Lesser, 66, a costume designer. “Where are those Thomas the Tank Engines going to go?”
Sally Lesser, a costume designer, works out of a studio in a storage facility in Red Hook, Brooklyn. She also depends on a storage unit to keep an overflow of household stuff. Photo: New York Times
For many New Yorkers, a storage unit or two (or three) is the only solution to living small. It is the spare closet or extra room that they don’t have, or can’t otherwise afford in a crowded city with ever shrinking and more expensive living quarters, including micro-apartments that are barely larger than storage units themselves. It is a temporary holding place for those in between jobs, moves, marriages and divorces, and an extension of the workplace for small businesses.
But as self-storage buildings have multiplied across the city, they are drawing increased scrutiny from city officials and community groups who say they take up space that could be used for something more productive. Now the city is proposing to restrict the development of new self-storage buildings in some industrial areas in the boroughs outside Manhattan, as part of a broader strategy to save more land for manufacturing and industry.
New York joins a small but growing number of communities, including San Francisco, Miami and Charleston, South Carolina, that have moved to restrict or curb the spread of self-storage buildings, seeking to strike a balance between the demands for more storage with the needs of communities for other things such as jobs, housing and grocery stores.
Benny Sagbay, right, and Carlos Cardenas of Pacifica Contractors loading their truck with items from their unit at Treasure Island Storage. Photo: New York Times
While even critics acknowledge that storage is needed, especially in space-challenged cities, some see the proliferation of these massive boxes as emblematic of the hoarding ways of Americans. As comedian George Carlin joked about people’s growing piles of material possessions: “That’s what life is all about, tryin’ to find a place for your stuff!” Now the question for many is: Just how much storage does this country need?
“We have a lot of self-storage facilities out here, and people are tired of seeing them pop up,” said Charles Johnson, a councilman in Baytown, Texas, a city of about 75,000 near Houston with 23 self-storage buildings and two more under construction. At his suggestion, the local newspaper, The Baytown Sun, recently asked its readers if there should be a self-storage cap. They voted yes by nearly 2-1.
The self-storage industry has grown to about 50,000 sites nationwide after evolving from the moving-and-storage business in the Midwest and the South in the late 1960s, said Timothy J. Dietz, president and chief executive of the Self Storage Association, an industry group. Nearly one-third are concentrated in Texas, California, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina.
James Coakley, president of Treasure Island Storage, one of New York’s largest self-storage facilities, Photo: New York Times
Dietz said self-storage provided residents and businesses small, secure spaces, flexible month-to-month leases and cheaper prices than traditional warehouses. “Self-storage has become part of the fabric of our culture,” he said. “It helps families in transition, businesses, soldiers, retirees.”
New York, perhaps surprisingly, has actually lagged the rest of the country in self-storage capacity and is the most undersupplied major metropolitan market, with an average of 0.32 square-metres per person compared with 0.66 nationally, said R. Christian Sonne, an executive vice president for CBRE, who follows the industry.
New York City’s 240 self-storage buildings include about 60 that have opened in the past decade, according to industry estimates. Many are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, offering free coffee, restrooms and internet access.
Timothy J. Dietz, center, chief executive of the Self Storage Association, delivered remarks opposing a plan to restrict expansion of self-storage companies at a City Planning Commission meeting in Manhattan last month. Photo: New York Times
City planners have proposed a special permit for self-storage sites in designated industrial areas that would establish a review process that would take about two years on average. The city’s manufacturing base has shrivelled, to 76,300 workers in 2016 from 265,200 in 1990. The permit proposal requires the approval of the City Planning Commission and the City Council.
In a similar move, San Francisco carved out industrial districts that ban the development of self-storage buildings, along with hotels and office towers. “These industrial areas would not exist at all if you didn’t have protections for them,” Steve Wertheim, a San Francisco city planner, said.
Adam Friedman, executive director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, said self-storage developers drove up real estate prices and displaced manufacturers who provided more and better-paying jobs. He added that New York’s proposal was not tough enough and would still allow industrial sites to be claimed by self-storage developers. “They’re like cash cows,” he said. “They have very little employment and very low operating costs, so they can pay more for land.”
Treasure Island Storage in Red Hook also houses artist studios on the third floor. Photo: New York Times
In Brooklyn, Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Centre, a nonprofit that redevelops buildings to house manufacturers, has been outbid by self-storage developers for a half-dozen sites in the past five years, said Brian T. Coleman, the chief executive. “These days, they are one of our biggest competitors,” he said.
City planners said their proposal would have only a minimal impact on overall self-storage development since sites outside these designated industrial areas would not require a special permit.
But self-storage developers and operators have mobilised against what they call a “de facto ban,” saying it will sharply curtail future supply at a time when most self-storage buildings are nearly full and demand is growing along with the city’s population. They warn that it will result in higher prices for everyone who relies on them.
Kevin Rodriguez and his family used a storage unit at Treasure Island when they were between apartments. Photo: New York Times
They also say the proposal unfairly singles them out and overlooks their support of businesses and manufacturers that use storage.
Marc Sharinn, chief executive of SNL Development Group in the Bronx, which has worked on 11 self-storage sites since 2011, said so much of the city is zoned for housing or already developed that industrial areas are “our fertile land.””We’re already so limited in where we can build, it’s really a death knell for us,” he said.