A proposed self-storage facility in Chippewa Falls, Wis., was rejected this week by the city council. The developers asked for an empty block along Dutchman Drive to be rezoned from multi-family units to commercial property, but the council denied the special-use permit request after listening to residents concerns.

Three residents spoke publicly in opposition to the project, preferring the land remain zoned for residential use. One expressed concerns over increased traffic. A representative for the self-storage project either did not speak or was not present at the meeting, according to the source.

The self-storage facility would have comprised three buildings and 164 units.

One in six American adults (16 percent) has moved within the past 12 months, with 57 percent relocating to homes within a 25-mile radius, according to a survey commissioned by SpareFoot, an online marketplace that streamlines the rental process for self-storage customers. In addition, 18 percent of movers cited settling into a bigger or better home as being the most common reason for relocating, while 15 percent said their move was work-related.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 12 percent of Americans older than age 1 changed residences in 2012, up from a record low of 11.6 percent between 2010 and 2011. The moving period covered by the SpareFoot survey was spring 2012 to spring 2013. In terms of regional relocations, the South had the highest percentage of movers (19 percent), followed by the West (18 percent), Midwest (14 percent) and Northeast (12 percent), according to the SpareFoot survey.

Our survey shows that, buoyed by the continuing economic recovery, more Americans are on the move. This is a good sign for the housing market and for any company that helps people move, said Chuck Gordon, CEO.

The release of the survey results coincides with the first National Moving Day on May 28. Each year, the day after Memorial Day is considered one of the busiest days of the year for moving and jumpstarts the summer moving season, SpareFoot officials said. The day is sometimes referred to as Crazy Tuesday in the self-storage industry, the company said.

The demand for storage and the resulting call volume and foot traffic are enormous on this day at self-storage facilities across the U.S. It is the self-storage equivalent to retails Black Friday, said Tron Jordheim, vice president of marketing at StorageMart, a Columbia, Mo.-based self-storage operator with more than 130 locations throughout the United States and Canada.

Moving-truck companies also experience a surge in activity the day after Memorial Day. National Moving Day marks an unofficial start of our peak do-it-yourself moving season for one-way and local truck rentals at our over 2,200 locations across North America, said Don Mikes, senior vice president of rental for Penske Truck Rental.

The SpareFoot survey was administered by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, which conducted 3,004 phone interviews in three polling sessions between April 25 and May 12. The survey has a margin of error of 2.1 percent.

Founded in 2008, SpareFoot.com helps consumers find and reserve self-storage units, with comparison shopping tools that show real-time availability and exclusive deals. There are more than 6,500 self-storage facilities in its network. The company also provides Web-marketing solutions for storage facility owners and operators including AdNetwork, SiteBuilder and GeoPages.

U.K. self-storage operator Big Yellow Group PLC released financial results for its fiscal year and the fourth quarter ended March 31. Revenue for the year was £69.7 million ($105 million), which was up 6 percent over the previous fiscal year. Adjusted profit before tax was £25.5 million ($38.4 million), an increase of 8 percent year over year. Store revenue for the quarter was down 1 percent compared to the same quarter the previous year.

The companys 54 wholly owned stores showed a net gain in occupancy of 90,000 square feet, representing an average of 1,666 square feet per store. For Big Yellows 32 established locations, occupancy was 72.8 percent compared to 74.3 percent at the same time last year. The 22 lease-up stores increased occupancy from 48.8 percent to 54.3 percent. Overall store occupancy increased during the year from 63.5 percent to 64.8 percent.

The results were partially attributed to the impact absorbed from the governments imposed 20 percent value-added tax (VAT) on self-storage that went into effect Oct. 1, 2012.

We made a strong start to the year with significant occupancy growth in the first half (our seasonally strongest period), as we additionally benefited from the increased business and consumer confidence in the lead-up to the Olympics, said Nicholas Vetch, executive chairman. The seasonally weaker quarter to December was further impacted by a combination of a softening in the macroeconomy in the period after the Olympics, and price increases to our domestic customers of 10 percent or 12.5 percent as a result of the imposition of VAT on our storage rents from Oct. 1. By the beginning of the fourth quarter, the environment had stabilized, and we saw a return to growth in net occupancy.

The company has received approval to build three new locations and is awaiting permission on a fourth property.

Big Yellow Group operates 66 self-storage locations in the United Kingdom under the Big Yellow Self Storage brand name, with most concentrated in Greater London. The portfolio comprises 4.2 million square feet.

Every business environment presents potential safety hazards, from wet floors and loose carpeting to broken pavement and wobbly wall fixtures. In the case of self-storage, facility operators must guard against accidents that can occur to tenants, visitors and staff. All of the above risks apply as well as perils including faulty access gates and malfunctioning unit doors. These items not only pose a threat to people's physical safety, they can become a financial threat to the business if they lead to a lawsuit.

To learn about the biggest safety hazards faced by owners and managers, Inside Self-Storage reached out to members of the Self-Storage Talk online community. We asked them about onsite dangers as well as instances in which they or a customer were injured on the property. See if any of these apply to you. If you'd like to add an experience to the ongoing conversation, visit the thread, "What are your biggest safety hazards on site?"

What are the top physical safety hazards at your self-storage property?

I have a commercial loading dock, used by several of my tenants and the businesses at the front of the shopping center, which presents some unique hazards I wish both the landlord and my employer would address. The loading ramps are of the spring-operated type and can seriously injure an uneducated user. I try my best to train my tenants on the proper/safe way to use them, but I have no control over most people that use them. There are no safety rails/chains installed to prevent someone from walking/falling off the dock, and lighting is totally inadequate. Another area of concern is the main entrance gate; it has no provision to stop someone from being struck or pinned by the closing gate. My concerns are always met with the cheap-assed owner reply of "too expensive" or the like.
~Senior Member FHARumRunner

Customers! Just kidding. Some of our safety hazards come from tenants thinking they can change their oil in their car and leave the rags and filters on the roadway. It has also happened that they spill something in their unit and swept it out into the hallways. Other than that, we have been pretty lucky of not having any safety issues.
~Senior Member LockItUpOgden

After more than 23 years in business, we've had our first slip and fall this February. The dust hasn't settled yet, but long story short, a 75-year-old woman with two prior back surgeries was walking while watching her feet. She ran into an air-conditioning unit that sticks out of the wall 16 inches and fell backward. That AC unit's been there more than 10 years without incident. The customer told our insurance lady that the ADA rule is that nothing can extend more than 4 inches from a wall. Now we have to research the ADA rules to see if we're in violation or if she's misinformed. It's tough to idiot-proof your entire facility, but if you've identified an obvious hazard, it has got to be addressed immediately!
~Junior Member Trudy D

Has anyone, whether an employee, customer or trespasser, ever injured themselves at your facility? What happened and how did you remedy the situation?

I had a customer walk under the arm gate as the arm was coming down so it would bop her on the head once. She was pissed because I wasn't waiving late fees or pro-rating rent (it's in the contract that we do not do these things), and he filed a suit against us later.

I covered my bases by filling out an incident report, and because she was "dizzy and nauseous" and worried about "brain damage" and rubbing her forehead red to make a mark, I called EMS to check on her because of the fuss, and she declined care. (I also stood under the gate arm on video and demonstrated the gate arm hitting me for the claim. There is a sensor, so if it comes in contact with anything, the arm will stop and raise itself.)
~Senior Member TimburrWulf

I was walking the property, and at the end of one of the driveways I saw a man flat on his back with items strewn around him. I ran over to him. He was barely conscious and smelled of alcohol, and his head and face were very bloody. I could not get him to talk to me. I called 911.

The fire department was here first and they secured his head, which had been bleeding profusely, and got him onto the stretcher. Then the cops arrived ("Nothing to see here"), and then came the ambulance ... and loaded him up and drove him to our tiny local hospital. He was then flown out of the area for treatment.

Meanwhile, his brother in Texas called to tell me what had happened (I already knew he was stinkin' drunk and had fallen down the stairs). When the dude finally got his head sewn back on and came back to see me, his brother had already paid his storage fee, and I told him he had to be out of the unit and off the property by day's end. He complied. But that was all really scary to me in the beginning when it happened.
~Senior Member geraldine1051

I was actually recently injured on the property. After the time change, I went out to reset our light timers. The cover for the timer box is the type with a sheet of thin metal that just slides up into a groove and has two screws at the bottom to hold it in place. As I was removing the second screw, the cover sliced the screw in half and slammed down on my foot right at the base of my toes (think guillotine!). I almost passed out from the pain! I was bruised over the entire top of my foot and swollen to almost double its size.

I filled out an incident report and sent it to the corporate office. (I am the district manager, so I didn't bother sending it to myself first!) The next day, I went to urgent care and have been under their care for six weeks. I even got to wear one of those fashionable black Velcro boots for a few weeks! ... The only thing that could have prevented this injury would be if I was wearing steel-toed boots!
~Moderator MamaDuke

Most of the incidents with customers have been small lacerations from doors or latches. Soap and water with a band-aid soothed their wounded pride and no further problems.

[We had] one trip incident where an elderly lady fell and bruised her chest. My employer paid her medical bills for initial visit and follow-up to make sure nothing was broken. I removed the trip hazard.

Another customer broke his ankle moving a large pallet of his things down a ramp that I had warned him not to do by himself. He drove himself to the emergency room. After picking up his things and another pallet of heavy samples, I picked him up from the hospital and took him home. He rented for several years until he was transferred out of state. I know I exposed myself to a great deal of liability, but like I told my employer, the man was in pain and asked for my help. That's what I have insurance for.

The company bookkeeper fell on the ice a couple of years ago after being told to stay home until I had cleared the lot of ice. She suffered a small fracture in her left wrist that healed in time.

I have injured myself numerous times clearing ice and snow from the lot, trying to prevent customer injuries. On one occasion, I called my employer to let him know I was flat on my back and had struck my head on the pavement. His reply that "Didn't I have a daughter living in the area that could take me to emergency room" was enough to convince me to leave the ice and snow problem to mother nature and just close the facility until mother nature corrected the problem. [My employer] never offered to come to my aid or call the rescue squad. Luckily I only suffered a small fracture, and I learned an important lesson about where I stood with my employer.
~Senior Member FHARumRunner

I was cleaning out a unit that had some metal studs in it, and as I stepped on the end of one, it raised up and sliced open my shin; and when I stepped off it, it sliced open the back of my other leg. I took off my shirt and wrapped it around the worse of the two cuts, called the local minor emergency to see if they could do stitches, finished my work and ran over to get sewn up ... [I] got 14 stitches in my shin, wrapped it up and went back to work.

[I] told the owner about six months later, paid for it all out of my pocket. It was my dumb mistake for not paying better attention. No need for him to pay for my stupidity and lack of attention.
~Member BroadwayStorage

We tag all of our units to keep tenants from throwing trash in them. At one of our facilities, a tenant attempted to take of one the these sealing tags and apparently ripped their thumb open. Needless to say, there was a settlement over $9,999.
~Senior Member Advantage IT

Few incidents over many years. None to me or mine, but [we] did have a tenant unloading a pickup truck with his flatbed trailer still attached. As he stepped off the truck, his foot slipped and he fell onto the edge of the trailer and broke his arm and cracked a couple of ribs. Scary, but nothing we could change here to fix.
~Senior Member dennybeall

Kutztown Self Storage celebrated its grand opening May 10, becoming the first self-storage facility to open in the borough of Kutztown, Pa. Owners Dale and Louann Reppert decided to enter the storage industry after health issues forced Dale to retire from his executive career at Morgan Stanley and the couple needed a place to store their daughters belongings when she moved away from home.

To build their self-storage project, the Repperts converted a building that once belonged to the national guard. The facility offers climate-controlled, interior storage, secure access, and security cameras.

I think its a great idea for Kutztown, especially for the college students, said Mayor Sandy Green. This is a great opportunity, and its a great use of this building.

Its nothing but a win-win for everybody. This is a niche that has needed to be filled for some time, said Tammy Gore, executive director of the Northeast Berks Chamber of Commerce. We have all these students with furniture and stereos and books, and instead of carrying them home every year, they can store them here. Its a need that hasnt been met in this community so I think its great.

Local contractor ONeil Enterprises oversaw the building conversion.

We found a purpose for an old building, Dale Reppert said. We cleaned it up and we made an old building new again, and by doing so, weve provided a good service to the community.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed into law an amended self-storage lien-law bill on May 6 that updates the states lien-auction procedures. The legislation (Senate Bill 61) includes the allowance of default notifications sent by e-mail, public advertisements of a lien auction in media other than a local newspaper and using online-auction websites to conduct a lien sale. The law also enables operators to place a value limit on stored property and to have stored vehicles towed after default exceeds 60 days.

Currently, self-storage operators in Georgia must publish auction notices once a week for two consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where their facility is located. While the frequency of notices will remain the same under the law, the new provision removes the stipulation of using a newspaper to advertise the auction. An auction will be deemed commercially reasonable as long as at least three independent bidders attend the sale at the time and place advertised, according to the laws new language.

All new updates to the law will go into effect on July 1.

The Georgia Self Storage Association and the national Self Storage Association (SSA) worked together for two years to gets lawmakers to update the lien law, SSA officials said. Georgia members Bob Baccus, Dan Curtis, Stacey Gorman, Paul Maney, Heath Mulkey, Jim Ostervold, Mark Shirey, George Snelling and Richard Williams were in attendance when Deal signed the bill.

Employees of a Big Yellow Self Storage facility in Swindon, England, recently took on the challenge of cycling the distance from London to Paris to raise funds to fight Cystic Fibrosisall on exercise bikes. Three Big Yellow employees and three staffers from Robbins Removals joined forces to cycle a total of 212 miles in 16 hours and 40 minutes, raising more than £800 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

The feat was supported by Fit 4 Less, who donated two exercise bikes to be used during the challenge.

Cystic Fibrosis is a life-threatening, inherited disease affecting nearly 10,000 people in the United Kingdom, according to the Trust.

Big Yellow and Armadillo self-storage, which is now a part of the Big Yellow Group PLC, are providing the Trust with free storage space. The storage companies are involved in various fundraising activities, supporting the organization in raising funds and awareness, according to the Trust website, cysticfibrosis.org.uk.

Big Yellow operates 66 self-storage locations in the United Kingdom, with most concentrated in Greater London. The portfolio comprises 4.2 million square feet. Armadillo operates an additional 10 facilities. 

Update on 5/21/13 The Janesville, Wis., planning commission denied Menards Self Storages request for a conditional use permit to convert its former retail building into a self-storage facility. The commission rejected the proposal by a 5-1 vote.

Menards could still appeal the decision to the zoning board of appeals and then the circuit court. The city council will not review the matter.

---

Wisconsin self-storage operator Menards is seeking a conditional-use permit to build climate-controlled storage units inside a building it owns in Janesville, Wis., but city staff has recommended against the proposal. The city would prefer the 15-acre site be redeveloped into a destination shopping area.

The property is in a commercial area near a highway and Interstate 39/90. In advising against the project, city staff said they believed self-storage would negatively impact neighboring properties and the facility would impede the normal and orderly development and improvement of the surrounding property for uses permitted in the district.

Best known in the Midwest as a home-improvement retailer, Menards originally developed the site for retail in 1984, but the property has been vacant since 2008 when the company opened another home-improvement center nearby. The lot includes a 76,000-square-foot retail sales building and two freestanding buildings comprising more than 24,000 square feet. The main building would be converted to interior, climate-controlled units, and the two smaller buildings would offer traditional self-storage.

Menards self-storage facilities in Eau Claire and Sheboygan were similar conversion projects, according to the company, which also said there is local demand for climate-controlled storage options. The companys Eau Claire facility is 98 percent occupied.

It doesnt make much sense for a building to sit empty when a small investment can be made that will turn it into a business, said real estate representative Tyler Edwards in a letter to the city on behalf of Menards officials.

If the citys planning commission votes against the proposal, Menards could appeal the decision to the zoning board of appeals and then the circuit court. The city council will not review the matter, according to the source.

The Lock Up Self Storage is building new self-storage projects in Wheaton, Ill., and Bonita Springs, Fla.

The Wheaton facility will be located next to the Main Street Marketplace and comprise 81,543 square feet. It will offer climate-controlled and drive-up units, secure access and covered loading bays. Partners in Design Architects is providing architectural services on the project, and Watermark Engineering Resources Ltd. is conducting the civil engineering work.

The Florida project is already under construction and features a four-story facility comprising 73,000 square feet.

Meridian Design Build, a full-service construction company based in Deerfield, Ill., has been hired as the general contractor on both projects. The company specializes in coordinating the design and construction of manufacturing, distribution, office, commercial, hotel and residential facilities.

Based in Chicago, The Lock Up currently operates 13 self-storage facilities in Illinois and has 29 locations in eight states comprising more than 1.6 million square feet.