‘Disruptive’ storage firm takes rest of former Liverpool Next
StoreAway is to covert 36,000 sq ft of the vacant unit on Church Street into the brand’s first facility, joining ground floor occupier Decathlon in the building.
The plan is the first part of StoreAway’s strategy to convert 250,000 sq ft of vacant retail space across the country into storage.
The former Liverpool Next has been vacant since the clothing retailer relocated to the former Forever 21 unit on the corner of Church Street and Whitechapel.
Last year, Place North West reported that Decathlon had signed to take the ground floor retail space at Redevco’s 100,000 sq ft 18-20 Church Street.
The Decathlon store is due to open this month.
On the upper four floors of the building, StoreAway plans to provide self-storage facilities. Part of its bid to capitalise on the sector’s growth.
The self-storage sector has seen a 30% increase in profitability since 2013, according to StoreAway.
“Prevailing property market dynamics, such as the demise of the traditional retail sector, have allowed us to take relatively abundant existing buildings in commercially attractive locations and convert them in order to meet self-storage operational needs,” said StoreAway managing director Richard Lanyon.
“StoreAway plans to be disruptive in its UK operations by building up an underlying ‘added value’ operational real estate portfolio.”
Lanyon added: “Over the past decade, the self-storage sector has witnessed strong growth rates with demand outstripping supply. The Covid crisis has seen revenues, rates and occupancy all hold up proving its resilience. We believe that external trends, such as urbanisation, changing work practices and increased customer awareness will boost demand even further.”
StoreAway plans to launch 10 to 15 stores over the next three to five years and has already secured further sites in Birmingham, Basildon, Cheltenham and Bath, which will be unveiled over the next six months.
Totally the wrong location for a self storage unit, how are they going to cope with all the vehicles that will need to access it to deliver and collect at all times of the day?
By Dave
“Urbanisation” is the supposed reason for the demand. What they actually mean is most modern apartments aren’t big enough to store tenants possessions like winter coats, bedding and hobby items. Expect these in Manchester soon to support the rising “co-living” community. Urban life will be just one giant pack of subscriptions: rent, entertainment sub, scooter sub, food delivery sub… Generation Alpha won’t own a single thing and be stuck on that treadmill forever. It really is a capatilists utopia.
By Bootle
This is weird. Wouldn’t you want easy road access to a storage facility?
Sounds totally wrong and just strange for this popular and busy pedestrian location.
Previously a well located oddity with road access, rapid hardware moved into a similarly inappropriate location. They’re not around today as a result.
By Jeff
@Bootle and the capitalist utopia, some people want to rent and some don`t, but lots of people I have experienced want to own their own place even via right-to-buy, does that make them a capitalist? People want storage for all sorts of reasons like ;renting a furnished flat, working abroad and storing possessions, secure storage of treasured items,etc, etc.
Capitalism ain`t perfect but it creates jobs, to be honest I wish I had my own business.
People today have so many possessions whether it be clothes, furniture or whatever, in fact the charity shops are overloaded with stuff, and the local councils make tons of money collecting bulk items, however they probably spend plenty collecting the fly-tipping.
By Anonymous
Hey up! Anonymous: Capitalism is NOT owning property or markets or business enterprise. Capitalism is lending or owning purely to extract wealth.
By James Yates