Starting New Construction - Begin at Planning and Zoning!

There are so many nuances to building a self-storage facility or converting a self-storage facility from the 8-inch concrete load bearing floors to working with planning and zoning. We are going to spend the next few blogs talking about some tips and tricks for getting your new development up and running.

To start with, if you are interested in building you will be spending a lot of time working with planning and zoning to make sure that you can build your self-storage facility on the lot you are looking at or get the appropriate zoning changes that you might need in order to build.

The first thing to understand about planning and zoning is that they are a good thing. They lay out the city in an organized manner so that you don’t have a large industrial plant in the middle of a residential neighborhood. They lay out the city in a way that residential flows into apartments which then flows into light commercial and then gradually we go into industrial. This controls the traffic and the noise so that they are not a nuisance to the population.

Each city has a land use map based on what they see as the best use for a piece of property. If you want to make a change to the use of that property, then you are going to have to go to the city and request an amendment or a zoning change. This isn’t something that you can just walk in request. There will be a long list of requirements from the zoning department to get the approval and it won’t happen overnight.

You will be working with the staff at the zoning office for a long time. The most important thing is to get staff approval of your preliminary plans. You should find out right off the bat if they are open to self-storage facilities. If they are against self-storage or if they say that a project cannot be done, listen. If they are against your project, it will be very hard to get it off the ground.

Start by finding out what types of commercial zoning allows self-storage in your area. Once you know that, then you want to see what permits have recently been issued or what is in the que. You need to have an idea of what your competition is doing so that you don’t oversaturate the market.

Don’t be afraid of the planning and zoning commission. They can be a great ally. Start doing some research before you start making offers on properties that may not be able to have a self-storage facility built on it. As always, happy investing.