Industrial/Flex Property- Day in the Life, Building a Flex Prop

[Henry Clark]

Primarily do Self Storage.  As I have looked around several cities, I have come across Industrial Flex, Contractor Garages and Contractor Incubator buildings.

We have 4 acres set aside on a 4 lane road with 15,000 Vehicle Traffic Count per day. This is an 8 acre site.  We built Phase 1 as self storage 230 units on the back side.  Phase 2 will be 200 self storage units.  However a mix will be 12 x 40 with electricity to support our Contractor Incubator buildings.  Phase 3 which is along the road will be what I call Contractor Incubator buildings.

Site selection:

Normally you would select a site for a particular investment.  In this case we could do 630 Storage units in this location, but we do not feel the market will support that.  Thus we saved the road frontage and a separate access for this endeavor.  We are lucky, this is a perfect site.  4810 South 35th street, Council Bluffs, IA if you want to Google.  Veterans highway which is the 4 lane in front of us goes East (Council Bluffs) and West (South Omaha and Downtown Omaha).  Interstate 80 and Highway 75 which are tied to Veterans run North and South.  The actual location does not have a street light, but has two turn in/out lanes both to cross the street and to get off the street.  The entrance to the location is on a slow dead end street, giving you a chance to approach the highway.  With the internet, Contractors (electricians, plumbers, hvac, landscapers, etc don't need a location on the main drag anymore.  Plus they don't bring their customers to their shops.  Another big plus for this location, is the major Electrical Supply house and Welding Supply house are on our highway nearby, thus we get a lot of contractor traffic.  Just need to clean some brush and move the Orange Storage container we are using during construction.  Otherwise we have access, zoning, water, sewer, electrical and Ground project ready.

Market:

I will document the market next time.  This will be harder, since I have a "proven" method for Self Storage. I need to come up with one for Contractor buildings.

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If I'm missing a topic, just let me know to add.

[Henry Clark]

On these long projects, every once in a while you want to stop and think why you are doing them.  Pay for your house or Son's college.  A bigger "Number". Pure joy.

Or knowing we got our 10,000 Teak trees planted down in Belize, and life is good.  Can't wait to go down around Covid, and walk through the Teak plantation and seeing the trees growing.