No shortage of storage

Flathead Valley full of well-used storage-unit facilities

Do people in the Flathead Valley have too much stuff?

Not if you're looking at it from the perspective of those who own storage-unit facilities, where people store all that stuff.

Storage units are a booming business here, even in these tough times.

Depending on which Yellow Pages categories are included, the Flathead Valley boasts well over 80 companies offering household and commercial storage units - some of them have hundreds of units on a single site. The units range from the size of a walk-in closet to a heated space big enough for the luxury cruisers on Flathead Lake.

Surprisingly, despite the proliferation of facilities it appears most individual units don't go vacant for long.

"None of us likes to throw our things away," Clariss Hagen said. She and her husband live on-site at Bear Den Mini Storage, which her son Doug Dougherty and Connie Burns built about four years ago just outside Columbia Falls.

"And some of us have too much," she quipped, noting that their 104 units are "completely full up" by the junction of U.S. 2 East and Walsh Road. "But they can store it there and go check on it every now and then."

Their location on the beaten path makes it convenient for household-goods stashers and the handful of business owners who store construction forms and other work supplies there.

Local residents are their stock in trade, but "it seems like we have had so many calls for rental spaces - a lot of them from out of town - and we have to say we don't have anything available."

Across the valley on U.S. 2 East closer to Kila, Batavia Storage manager Nick Chesler said out-of-staters rent perhaps a fourth of their 470 enclosed units and 60 outside storage spaces. Chesler lives on the site and manages the storage business for owners Joe and Betsy Kaye.

"A huge percentage live in Kalispell or Kila … in the valley," Chesler said from the site on Batavia Lane north of Smith Valley School.

"Some are in Idaho or Washington or Oregon. There's a couple in Texas, and Georgia and Illinois," Chesler said. "This is where they plan on coming back to eventually. They're elsewhere for work purposes now, but they see themselves coming back."

Batavia Storage, however, is carving out a unique niche targeting local business professionals.

The Kayes, after buying it from original owners Dale and Bonnie Braaten in 2006, started a business-record storage service. A customer rents a storage unit, gives Batavia Storage a list of all their boxes and how they want them configured, then Chesler builds shelves so all records are off the ground.

"Then we organize them and will deliver their boxes when they need them," he said.

Attorneys, chiropractic offices, small specialty clinics and other professionals are their typical clients.

"They like that I live here on the premises, that we have something like 1,000 cameras or more on the premises, and they can access it 24 hours a day with their own gate code," he said.

And they don't have to dedicate their office space to storage.

In the last couple months, Chesler said, that portion of the business "has really grown … about 15 or 20 percent of business is for record storage now."

The storage-unit business seems to pencil out.

"There's money in it, even with so many others," Chesler said. "But you've got to have good specials, you've got to know your customers."

They'll offer a seventh month rent-free with six months prepaid, and give free use of a Batavia Storage truck for customers to haul their possessions.

"The reason I got into mini storage was I was dumb enough to rent one for seven years," Doug Leib said lightheartedly. Two years ago, he opened Grandma's Attic Mini Storage next to his Certified Auto Repair and Sales on Whitefish Stage Road north of Kalispell city limits.

"And then I figured out I was on the wrong side of the fence," Leib said. "At $50 a month for seven years, that's $4,200 we spent on storing junk, and then we sold the junk for $300 (through a garage sale). Now I'm on the right side of the fence."

He's been keeping his 38 units pretty much full since opening for business two or three years ago. A couple empty units had been the norm, but right now there are four open.

"I don't know what we'll see now, with the economy," said Leib, who also plows snow for businesses. "I've noticed a downturn in all my businesses."

Still, it provides enough cash flow to cover his housing costs on the property, plus some pocket money.

Taking a look at the four acres just south of him where Meridian Mini Storage built 100 more units this past year, he sees potential.

"I'm happy with 38, but I wish I had 100," Leib said, then mulled over what might be his saturation point. "I wish I had 10,000, but I'm 65 and I don't want to be that busy. If I went to 100 it would take probably a year to fill them up.

"It used to be people would clamor for them because there weren't enough units available. Now we're getting (more in line with demand)."

Doni Landwehr and her husband operate Wildflower Storage to the east of Columbia Falls as another stream of income so they can enjoy their life in the valley. They also run an outfitting business and Doni works with Three Rivers Emergency Medical Service in Columbia Falls.

They keep about 70 percent of their storage units full at any given time, she said. But it was high usage at their original location on Jensen Road, built about a decade ago, that prompted their expansion five or so years ago to Kokanee Bend.

"When you get up to a certain percentage of occupancy" it makes sense to expand, Landwehr said. "It was really variable. It depends on what kind of space you have as far as how many buildings you put up, with all the building regulations."

Wildflower Storage customers most often are people moving in or out of the area or from one home to another in the valley, she said. They're students heading off to college, or families storing their summer "toys" in the winter, and winter gear in the summer.

"People just kind of hate to change their mode," she said. "They have a lot of possessions so they store them until they pick them up again. They just have a lot of stuff."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com