California-based company, Public Storage was looking to expand their footprint in the Twin Cities market and made the strategic decision to move into this metro area and grow a target market base rapidly by offering very specific, climate-controlled self storage services on properties they already held. 

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These building prototypes are the first of their kind from Public Storage, incorporating a “drive thru/loading” area specifically designed for cold weather climates. The Spring Lake Park location also features a massive pond designed to manage storm water for the entire site, in addition to three neighboring sites (approximately half a city block). 

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Both projects were new three-story, climate-controlled self storage facilities built on existing and operating Public Storage sites. Each project required the new building to be built on an existing site to take the place of open storage and parking (boat/RV/trailer/etc.). This required demolition of some current facilities, site prep, full utility installation and construction of the new buildings to integrate with the existing facility. 

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The design of the building is typical of more temperate and warm climate locations, so building a design of this type in the Minnesota winter was a challenge, especially during the coldest and highest snowfall winter and highest rainfall summer ever recorded. Weather alone provided significant difficulties. 

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The sites were both very small as they were situated on existing properties that needed to maintain day-to-day business operations without affecting tenants or staff. This meant that material had to arrive just-in-time, and our trade partners were very critical to helping us get the timing right. Once material arrived, it needed to be offloaded and staged immediately to prevent disruption to tenants. Integrating the site design while maintaining access for tenants was also incredibly tough, and lead to lots of late or irregular hours for trade partners. Constant communication was critical to the success of these projects.