So Bob studied his city — Nashville — and found no one catered to the small business storage segment of the market…no one. So he studied and developed prototypes in his head. The smallest units would be 10’x20’ (200 square feet; sf) with a mix of units up to around 1,000 sf. He thought of all the needs of a small business: electrical outlets for tool charging, community restrooms, parking/circulation, small office suites with a community conference room and more.
To turn his vision into reality, Bob purchased his first property in December 2009. At acquisition, the property contained 33,600 square sf in four buildings, a former lumberyard with lean-to open structures. The office space in one building was reconfigured for small office suites (100-300 sf) and the balance of the buildings was enclosed and configured into 200- to 3,000 sf storage spaces. The property enjoyed high occupancy through the recession as larger warehouse tenants in other locations downsized and moved in. Occupancy remained above 90% from acquisition through the development of five additional buildings and is 100% occupied today. ValueXpress provided a cash-out financing for this project, and now Bob is building two new projects and has three more on the drawing board.