U-Haul Co. of Eastern Ontario, Canada, has purchased an empty building in Toronto’s historic Stockyards District that it plans to convert to self-storage. Near downtown Toronto, the property at 355 Weston Road will be branded as U-Haul Moving and Storage of Stockyards District.
The three-story brick structure includes 95,280 square feet of building space and a basement. The 1.38-acre property currently features a temporary showroom offering truck and trailer rentals and the sale of moving and packing supplies. Plans are underway to add climate-controlled self-storage as well as U-Box moving and storage containers.
The Stockyards is the northwest quadrant of “The Junction,” a neighborhood named for its four intersecting railway lines, according to a U-Haul press release. The Junction manufacturing community specialized in meat processing, furniture assembly and millwork in the 19th century. Stockyards was Canada’s largest livestock market and the center of Ontario’s meat-packing industry. While most of the plants in the area are now defunct, the Stockyards name is still used.
The opening of the Toronto store is being driven by U-Haul’s corporate sustainability initiatives, which support infill development to help local communities lower their carbon footprint, according to the release. U-Haul’s adaptive reuse of existing structures eliminates the amount of energy and resources required for new-construction materials and helps local cities diminish their unwanted inventory of unused buildings, company officials said.
Established in 1945, U-Haul International Inc. has more than 40 million square feet of storage space at more than 1,000 owned and managed facilities throughout North America.
Sources:
- U-Haul International: U-Haul Expands Operations into Historic Stockyards District
