On Nov. 20, Morada Self Storage of Stockton, Calif., will partner with the Oakland Raiders and a local news station to collect coats for kids. The facility will host the News 10 Coats for Kids Drive, which will be attended by members of the football team as well as the Raiderettes, the teams cheerleading squad. Fans can get autographs and have their picture taken with the team.

The event will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will include a giveaway of three front-row tickets for the Raiders-Dolphins game on Nov 28.

This is the 20^th annual campaign for the coat drive, which has collected 475,000 coats over the years. Last year alone, 33,563 coats were collected for children in need.

A private equity real estate fund launched by Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, Kayne Anderson Real Estate Partners I LP, and Flagship Investment Group, a developer and operator of commercial property, will acquire five Florida self-storage facilities for a total of $25 million. The properties comprise more than 375,000 square feet in more than 3,100 units. They are located in Clermont, Fleming Island, Minneola and Orange Park, Fla.

Kayne Anderson Real Estate began investing in off-campus student housing in 2007 as part of a strategy to invest in specialized real estate sectors that have recession-defiant characteristics.  Through its partnership with Flagship, the company is able to expand on this strategy through self-storage investment, in which Flagship has experience.

Based in Orlando, Fla., Flagship is a diversified real estate company focused on self-storage, hospitality and master-planned communities.

Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors, with offices in Armonk, N.Y., Houston, Los Angeles and New York City, is a $10 billion investment management firm.

For the third straight year, Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas, residents have voted Access Self Storage the recipient of the Consumers Choice Award for the self-storage category. Presented by the Consumers Choice Institute of Atlanta, the award recognizes local businesses that excel in the areas of quality, value, customer service, appearance and other consumer-based criteria. Recipients are voted on by members of the public in surveys conducted by independent research firms in the United States and Canada.

Access Self Storage owner Dough Hunt accepted the honor at an awards presentation held in Fort Worth on Oct. 16. He said he was privileged to accept this third award and reiterated his companys commitment to earn it again.

Access operates six self-storage facilities in Texas.

U-Store-It LP purchased two N.Y. self-storage facilities from Storage Deluxe Management Company for roughly $26.7 million.

The first property, at 2887 Atlantic Ave., has 47,290 square feet. The four-story self-storage facility is on a half-acre lot on Long Island and has 861 self-storage units.

The second facility, 395 Brook Ave. in the Bronx, is three stories with 67,162 square feet on one acre with 1,343 units.

The price per unit for this investment portfolio comes to approximately $12,000. Doug McCarron, Aaron Swerdlin and Barbara Guffey with Holliday Fenoglio Fowler (HFF) represented the seller.

The PODS Canadian franchise network in Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver, and Ottawa have teamed up to support The Salvation Army this holiday season to provide PODS moving and storage containers as the organization collects food, clothing, toys and other items for the needy. 

The PODS containers will be used to store donated goods at Salvation Army collection points across Canada. PODS will then transport the containers to local Salvation Army distribution centers. This is the first year that PODS has assisted The Salvation Army in Canada with its holiday collection efforts.

Our local PODS franchise owners in Canada are very excited to be providing storage services to The Salvation Army this holiday season, said George Spowart, PODS vice president of marketing. This collaboration makes perfect sense. Our large network of locations across Canada is ready to provide PODS storage containers to assist with the holiday season.

The Salvation Army is the largest non-governmental direct provider of social services in Canada. It strives to give hope and support to vulnerable people in 400 communities across Canada and in 118 countries around the world.

We are extremely grateful for the support well receive throughout the Christmas season from PODS, said Graham Moore, territorial secretary for public relations and development of The Salvation Army in Canada. Our goal is to provide dignity for all and having safe and secure storage and transportation will go a long way to help make that goal a reality.

Founded in 1998, PODS currently provides moving and storage services to a population of more than 245 million consumers, in 48 U.S. states, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom through its company-owned and independent franchise network. To date, the PODS network has completed more than 300,000 long-distance relocations, exceeded one million deliveries and has nearly 141,000 PODS containers in service.

According to a case filed with the Harris County District Court on Nov. 5, Amazing Spaces, a Texas-based self-storage business with four facilities, is suing its former law firm for malpractice. The plaintiffs, Amazing Spaces founders Scott and Kathy Tautenhahn, allege one of the law firms attorneys cannibalized their business designs for his own gain.

Also listed as plaintiffs on the case are Amazing Spaces limited partnerships Tautenhahn Holdings LP, K-Kies II Ltd. and K-Kies IV Ltd.

The case filed against Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell, and attorneys Douglas Yeager, Robert Pieringer and Andrew Gregory, states the defendants breached professional standards of care, acted unconscionably and violated their fiduciary duties. Not only did the firm decline to represent Amazing Spaces in a recent matter involving trademark infringement, the plaintiffs claim an employee of the law firm stole their designs to start his own self-storage business and compete with them directly.

The plaintiffs are seeking actual, treble and punitive damages, fee forfeiture, attorney's fees, and court costs.

The case number is 2010-73570. Details can be viewed at the website for the Office of Harris County District Clerk, www.hcdistrictclerk.com.

The North Carolina Self Storage Association (NCSSA) elected board directors during its annual membership meeting, Oct. 25, at the Southeastern Self Storage Convention and Tradeshow in Wilmington, N.C. The new directors are Phyllis Koehler of NU Enterprises Inc. in Mooresville, Jimmy Martin of Martin Self Storage in Wilmington, Kevin Neal of Storage Structures Inc. in Colfax, and Patti Thomas of All About Storage in Concord.

Retiring from the board are Sarah Bradley of Southside Storage in Mebane, Markus Hecker of SMD Software in Raleigh and Shannon Monroe of BETCO Inc. in High Point.

Board members continuing their terms are:

• Shelley Bhatia, Ultimate Storage Co., Cary
• Stephen Emmons, Triple SSS Inc., Mooresville
• Don Forrest, Dock Yard Self Storage, Hickory
• Eric Gilbert, Moore and Johnson Insurance Agency, Raleigh
• Robert High, Robert High Properties, Wilmington
• Robert Hukill, Grandbridge Real Estate Capital, Raleigh
• Janey Lane, Lampe Management Co., Smithfield
• Bobby Mann, StorageMax Management LLC, Raleigh
• Franklin McLeod, American Self Storage, Raleigh
• Josh Rolland, U.S. Door & Building Components, Raleigh 

The newly elected board also met to select officers for 2011. The new appointments are Bhatia as president, Forrest as vice president, Gilbert as secretary and High as treasurer.

NCSSA's mission is to provide its members with quality standards, proper guidance, networking opportunities, leadership, open communication and credibility for the local self-storage industry. The association is comprised of facility owner/operators as well as vendors that serve the industry NCSSA is managed by IMI Association Executives Inc., a Morrisville-based association-management company.

By Chuck Gordon

As a self-storage operator, theres no question you should be marketing your facilities online. If you arent, you should start soon because your competitors most certainly are. There are many components to a successful online marketing campaign including your website, search-engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising, display advertising and third-party reservation services. Each of these elements is critical, but this article will focus on third-party reservation services.

Youve probably heard companies in this category called a few different things: self-storage search engines, self-storage directory websites, self-storage aggregators. All of these names refer to a category of companies that provide third-party reservation services. What these companies essentially do is generate new tenants for you through their own websites and marketing efforts. The method and model for each vendor is unique, but at a high level, the purpose of these companies is to rent your vacant units.

There are a few vendors offering this service including SpareFoot, SelfStorage.com, Self Storage Finders, USstoragesearch and StorageFront. Every storage operator should sign up for as many third-party websites as they can find, so long as each one delivers a positive return on investment (ROI).

Calculate Tenant Value

Before we look at specific models, lets determine how to calculate the dollar amount you should spend per rental. This number will help you decide which third-party websites are delivering a positive ROI. The figure will be unique for every storage facility, so Im going to give you a formula.

First, youll need to find the average length of stay for tenants at your property and the average monthly rent across all your units. Youll likely find this information in your management software. Once you have these numbers, multiply them to determine the average lifetime value of each tenant. For example, if your average monthly rent is $100 and your average length of stay is 10 months, each tenant who signs a lease at your facility is worth an average of $1,000. Of course, there are some customers who stay two months, but there are also some who stay five years, which is why you should work off the average.

Once youve calculated your average lifetime value, you can determine how much youre willing to pay for each new rental based on the assumption that the customer will be worth that much. Since tenants sourced from third parties are incremental business you wouldnt otherwise have, some would argue you could pay as much as 50 percent of the lifetime value, since youll still be profitable on that tenant. But lets be conservative and say youre willing to pay 10 percent. In the example above, this means you should be willing to pay a vendor $100 for each new tenant it sources.

Choosing a Third-Party Program

Third-party reservation services come in a few models. The first well look at is based on a monthly fee. The vendor charges the operator a flat fee per facility per month. This model works if youre extremely diligent about tracking the source of every new rental. At the end of each month, calculate how many rentals were generated by the vendornot calls, quotes or clicks, but actual new rentals. Then divide that number into the total amount youre paying. This will tell you how much youre paying per rental to be listed on that particular website.

For example, if you list five properties and the vendor charges $69 per month per facility, youre paying $345 a month. If two rentals are generated in a given month, youve paid $172.50 per rental, which is high in many markets. However, if 10 rentals were generated, your cost per rental would be only $34.50, which is a fantastic deal. My point is you have to track results from any vendor that charges you a monthly fee with vigilance because blindly paying every month could cost you thousands of dollars.

Another model in the reservation-services category is pay-per-rental, which allows you to pay only when a rental is generated. These providers generally charge at least $75 per rental, but charge you nothing if no rentals are generated. You dont need to watch these services quite so carefully because if theyre not performing, you dont pay anything.

There are a few other benefits to this model including aligned incentives. This means you benefit from any initiatives the vendor invests in to grow its own revenue, and the vendor doesnt make any money unless you do. A good example is a company that invests significant time and money to convert more of its reservations to rentals. Storage operators benefit from the investment since more rentals means more money.

Ultimately, the savvy storage operator should advertise with every single website that generates tenants at a cost per rental with positive ROI. If you dont get yourself in front of those tenants, your competition will!

Chuck Gordon is founder and CEO of SpareFoot.com, a pay-for-performance reservation-services provider for the self-storage industry, with thousands of new tenants generated for its clients each month. For more information, call 512.561.0946; e-mail [email protected] .

Westy Self Storage will host an art auction to benefit Christian Community Action (CCA) with a Nov. 19 fundraiser. The Work of heART fundraiser will be from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the grand lobby of Westy Self Storage in Norwalk, Conn. All proceeds will benefit Christian Community Actions food pantry and basic-needs programs.

The art auction will showcase the works of local and regional artists. CCA provides vital services for thousands of local residents in need, from furniture and financial assistance to a food pantry. Their primary mission is hunger prevention. Its food pantry provides each family member with six days worth of food each month. This enables its clients to make ends meet each month as they struggle to cover the high cost of living in Fairfield County.

Tickets are $50 each and available online at www.ccanorwalk.org. Westys Self Storage is located at 50 Keeler Ave., across US 1 from Home Depot. Light refreshments will be served and live entertainment will be provided.

We are extremely appreciative for Westy Self Storages willingness to donate the use of their lobby for our event, said Christi Pope, CCA executive director. Due to the current economic climate, demand for our help has increased about 40 percent in the last 2 years. Westys help is crucial to our fundraising.

Founded in 1990, Westy Self Storage is headquartered in Stamford, Conn. The companys portfolio of facilities span the tri-state area with seven centers in New York, six in Connecticut and three in New Jersey.

Police in Lowell, Ark., are looking for a man caught on surveillance video allegedly stealing flower pots from a local self-storage facility.

The Sept. 23 video shows the man walking up to a building at Arkansas Self Storage at 510 N. Bloomington and taking two cast-iron flower pots. He then put the pots in the back of a black, extended cab Ford 1-150 in which he appeared to be a passenger.

The pots are estimated to be worth $200 each, according to police. Anyone with information can contact the Northwest Arkansas Crimestoppers line at 479.790.TIPS.