A massive self-storage facility is being proposed for land near the Diamond Jamboree shopping center in Irvine in what would be among the largest nonapartment developments in the Irvine Business Complex over the past decade.
A Costa Mesa-based entity known as Alton Self-Storage LLC filed plans for a three-story, 216,651-square-foot facility about two blocks from Jamboree Road at 2215 Alton Parkway.
The project would be more than four times the size of the average self-storage facility in the U.S., according to recent data from the Self Storage Association, an Alexandria, Va.-based trade group.
It would go up on the site of a vacant 72,000-square-foot industrial building owned and previously used by Irvine-based carpet manufacturer Royalty Carpet Mills Inc.
The project would hold 1,348 self-storage units. Its height would be in line with the midrise apartment complexes that have been built nearby on Alton Parkway, according to city filings.
An initial hearing on the project was taken up by Irvine’s planning commission last week.
A go-ahead from the city would enable Alton Self-Storage to close on the purchase of the existing warehouse by the end of the year, with construction likely beginning in early 2015, according to Scott Seal, principal with the Orange office of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services.
Seal and colleague Chuck Noble are representing Alton Self-Storage. Voit Real Estate Co.’s John Griffin is representing the seller, a unit of Royalty Carpet.
Developers
Alton Self-Storage is a venture between two local owners and developers of self-storage facilities—Tustin-based SC Development and Costa Mesa-based Stadium Properties LLC.
Privately held SC Development has a portfolio of more than 3,800 apartments and 3,000 self-storage units in Southern California. Stadium Properties owns and operates 13 storage facilities under the Dollar Self Storage name, in California, Nevada and Arizona.
They aren’t the only entities eying more self-storage development in the Irvine Business Complex.
The owners of an existing Public Storage facility at the corner of Jamboree Road and Alton have filed initial plans with the city for an expansion of their single-story property, which currently runs about 100,000 square feet.
Pending
The size of the expansion hasn’t been disclosed, and a planning commission hearing date for the proposal hasn’t been announced, according to city records.
The self-storage industry has been one of the country’s fastest-growing commercial real estate sectors over the past few decades. It took the industry more than 25 years to build its first billion square feet of space in the U.S., but it added the second billion square feet in just eight years, from 1998 to 2005, according to the Self Storage Association.
The aging of the baby boomer generation is expected to continue the growth, according to Strategic Storage Trust Inc., a Ladera Ranch-based owner and operator that has nearly 80,000 storage units across the U.S. and Canada.
Apartments
A potential price for the sale of the old Royalty Carpet Mills building, which is on a 2.7-acre site, hasn’t been disclosed.
Other older industrial properties in the immediate area have sold for more than $3.5 million an acre over the past year, but most were purchased with residential redevelopment in mind.
Apartments have made up the bulk of new construction in recent years in the IBC, a 2,800-acre, largely commercial area near John Wayne Airport.
Nearly 3,000 apartments have been built there over the past few years, and several thousand more are either under construction or in the early stages of development.
Multifamily projects under way nearby include complexes by Chicago-based Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities Inc. in Arlington, Va., on Alton Parkway down the street from the vacant Royalty Carpet site.
The carpet maker’s headquarters are in a 190,000-square-foot facility on Red Hill Avenue about a mile from the Alton Parkway location.
The company’s founder, Mike Derderian, died last year. His company has been operating in the IBC since the 1970s, and he’d been one of the most outspoken critics of the residential development planned for the IBC.
Compatibility
The company and other local businesses with long ties to the IBC—including Allergan Inc. and Deft Inc.—had questioned the compatibility of residential development next to industrial and manufacturing businesses. Those companies contended that IBC residents would complain about noise, truck traffic and chemicals being used at the neighboring businesses, among other issues.
Allergan has shielded itself from residential development by buying a bulk of the properties around its main campus, including a pair of midsized offices near the corner of Dupont Drive and Von Karman Avenue that closed last month.
Deft, an Irvine-based specialty coatings supplier, was acquired last year by Pittsburgh-based PPG Industries Inc. but maintains its location on Von Karman Avenue.
