Cedar Rapids is seeing a proliferation of storage garages

CEDAR RAPIDS - Virgil and Janice Henley raised a family years ago in the big white house at 1718 Center Point Rd. NE across the street from their barbershop, the one with a digital sign that lets passers-by know how many customers are ahead of them.

In its day, too, the house site doubled as a bait shop and, more recently, a used car lot for the Henleys, who now are selling the property on contract to family friend Jon Bond.

Bond has given up on the house as a rental property and the sprawling yard as a car lot. Instead, he has placed himself in the vanguard of a commercial trend in the city - he is one of several business people building self-service storage garage developments, some of which are going up in older, established parts of the city like this one on Center Point Road NE.

'I don't want to keep mowing the grass,” Bond joked about the site.

More importantly, he said, the site is narrow and deep with much of it going to waste as a commercial asset. At the same time, he said there is a significant number of apartment complexes within a mile and few storage unit developments nearby. On top of that, two new apartment complexes are going up just a few blocks away on Center Point Road NE, Virgil Henley added.

'Everybody needs a place to put their stuff,” said Bond, who is planning as many as 88 garages on the 1.4-acre site.

Not so many years ago, the city zoning law relegated storage garages to industrial zones and the busiest commercial districts, a standard that changed in 2006 to allow storage garages in office/service districts as a conditional use.

Joe Mailander, the city's development services manager, said the lessening of restrictions fits into a larger philosophical shift in which the city is less concerned about separating certain uses of property and more interested in how different uses fit into an overall neighborhood.

Developments that mix housing with restaurants and shops is something the city promotes. But housing, shops and storage garages is a little different, Mailander acknowledged.

As a result, he said a storage garage project in an office/service zone continues to face a 'lengthy process” to secure a conditional use permit. That process requires that a storage garage development meet enhanced design standards that include the use of more attractive exterior materials as well as fencing and buffer yards to separate the garages from neighboring properties.

'If it's going to be in a residential area, it better look like it's in a residential area,” he said.

Just this week, three different storage garage projects secured conditional use permits: the Bond project; one at the site of the former Baker Greenhouses, 3215 Johnson Ave. NW; and one at 605 Boyson Road NE, a tough-to-develop parcel with a 700-foot TV tower.

Five other projects were approved in the city between 2012 and 2014, according to records.

It was the Boyson Road NE site that prompted the city to change its zoning law to allow storage garages in office/service zone districts, said Dave Houg, development services specialist. The garages, though, weren't built, but now are newly positioned to be built.

Mailander and Houg said the city doesn't keep track of how many self-storage garages there are, but Mailander said the question of demand is one he typically asks. Lately, those who want to build say most of them in the city are full and command an attractive rental charge.

'From a development standpoint, it's not a very costly building, and it generates pretty quick revenue,” Mailander said.

Todd Satterly, owner of Guppy's on the Go stores in Cedar Rapids, is building 160 storage units on the former Baker Greenhouses site behind his store on Johnson Avenue NW.

Satterly said he brought in a consultant from Ohio with 30 years of experience in the storage garage business to provide him with data about who would use them if he builds them. He said he learned that about a fourth of the demand will come from businesses, with most of the rest from residential customers. Some will use garages for a short time and others need them to store boats and trailers that the city rules don't permit to be stored in the driveway, he said.

Houg said neighbors around Satterly's storage garage project said the garages are preferable to more apartment complexes coming into the neighborhood, which is a sentiment that Virgil Henley said he shared on the project across from his barbershop.

A couple of years ago, Jim Schmidt, managing director for the Midwest at Business Reduction Analysts, secured city permission to build a two-story complex of 400 storage units at 33rd Avenue SW and J Street SW on a commercial corner but next to an older residential neighborhood.

He said he is looking to build in 2016 if he is successful leasing climate-controlled storage units he has constructed in part of the former Van Meter Industrial Building at 260 33rd Ave. SW.

Schmidt said people in transition need storage garages. Among those are the elderly who are moving into senior communities or nursing homes, or their children, who may need a place to store things when a parent has died, he said.

The city's Mailander said America needs storage garages 'because we like our stuff, and we're buying more and more and we don't have room for it.”

Mailander, the father of three young children, said he can't forget the last time he had a storage garage for his family.

'It took me two days to fill it with stuff, and after I had I filled, I thought to myself, ‘There's not one thing in this garage I even care about. Yet I'm going to spent $100 a month to store it.'”