I've noticed some restaurants in town and stores have water tanks mounted on top of towers.   

They make a stamp you can buy off of Amazon (or any office supply store) so you don't even have to write it a million times.If you want to be "nice" you could let them know of your plan.

If I could do that, I might get the property for what I'd originally intended, plus the owners would get some badly needed money instead of a big fat NOTHING by losing it in the auction.  

Thanks to super weak governance during the BLM riots Antifa and homeless.. allowing open air drug use ( legal drugs) and the killer theft under 900.00 is not enforced causing rampant thievery and many stores to close kind of like We see in the mid west and rust belt when neighborhoods change and retail exits as its not sustainable.

And some prohibit travel trailers/RV in certain zoning, that's what causes people to store their RV at min-storage places.There is a lot of publicity for Tiny Houses with various TV shows on several channels, but municipal zoning often lacks the latest fad.

It's out of control, just like looters stealing $900 worth of merchandise from a store with no repercussions. 

There would be no tenants I would have to deal with, only setting up a date for renters to move their stuff in and out.I'm also wondering if it would be a better idea to rent out the entire basement, or break it up into smaller rentals (i.e. a 30x30 space or a bunch of 10x5 spaces etc.)I'm imagining there is a market for people who need to store boxes for a quick move etc., but I can't imagine one person filling the entire basement so that's why I'm considering breaking it up if possible.

Again, the BiggerPockets store has some books for this or you can learn by watching podcasts, reading blogs, and interacting on the forum.

You keep the stores as retail space or did you convert to apartments?

You should have a main account for each property and then most local banks will allow you to create sub-accounts where can store funds or separate them into those buckets as the rent comes in.