Metro Storage Opens New Facility in Brooklyn, NY

Update 6/7/16 – Metro Storage has opened its new facility in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y. The ground-up development at 2727 Knapp St. is the operator’s fourth in the state. The four-story building comprises more than 80,000 rentable square feet of storage space in 1,357 climate-controlled units. It features multiple drive-up access points, four interior-loading bays, security measures and several elevators.

“We travelled a long road over five years to get to the point where we welcomed in our first tenants at the Knapp St. facility this month,” Gallagher said. Metro worked with local and municipal groups and agencies to overcome numerous challenges to build the facility, according to a company press release.

“Our biggest challenge was to modify a long-standing restrictive covenant over the land, which limited any development on the land to only a retail site with a marina component,” Gallagher said. “This restriction resulted in this site being vacant for nearly 30 years.”

In addition, Metro worked with the community board to address nearby resident concerns. It also worked with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in regard to having a storage facility adjacent to a public waterway. Finally, the company teamed up with the city on the project design, permitting and construction oversight.

“We received fantastic support from the local residents, Community Board No. 15, 46th District Councilman as well as ongoing encouragement from the city-planning commission to stay the course and see the project through to completion,” Gallagher said.

Ownership of the property includes Metro Storage; Clark Investment Group, a Wichita, Kan.-based real estate investment firm specializing in self-storage; and Post Management Self-Storage, a New York City-based self-storage company that develops, manages and owns self-storage in the Metro New York market.

9/15/14 – Metro Storage LLC, which operates more than 90 self-storage facilities in 11 states, hopes to build a 100,000-square-foot self-storage facility in the neighborhood of Gerritsen Beach in Brooklyn, N.Y. The property at 2713-2735 Knapp Street, a small parcel of land that juts into Plumb Beach Channel at Voorhies Avenue, has been vacant since the 1980s, largely due to zoning limitations.

In 2013, Metro Storage approached Community Board No. 15, which advises city officials on zoning and other issues, to repeal the “restrictive declaration” on the property that prohibited any use other than a retail and marina development. The board voted to recommend the city loosen its zoning to spur development of the vacant land.

Residents initially objected to the storage development, which is in Sheepshead Bay across the creek from the waterfront neighborhood. George Broadhead, president of the Gerritsen Beach Property Owners Association, said the community is now in favor of the storage business, saying it will be less disruptive to the area than other commercial developments that might pollute the waterway or increase traffic.

Gerritsen Beach resident David Stevens continues to oppose the storage development. He told the source he’d rather see the land used for a park, athletic fields or a marina.

The self-storage project will include four stories, landscaping and bioswales, which are designed to remove silt and pollution from surface runoff water. Metro Storage President Martin Gallagher said the deal has yet to be finalized and there is no construction timeline.

Headquartered in Lake Forest, Ill., Metro Storage is a privately owned, fully integrated real estate operating company specializing in the development, acquisition and management of self-storage facilities nationwide.

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