Calgary's StoreWest Group of Companies is rapidly expanding in two booming sectors, self-storage and express car wash, with hundreds of millions in assets under management and a strong development pipeline.

“We started in 2016,” Roland Schatz, the president and CEO of StoreWest, told RENX. “First and foremost, we have StoreWest Development, and we do storage development. We build for the Bluebird brand. We build right across Canada, so we are actively in four or five different provinces right now.”

In addition to self-storage, StoreWest has also grown into the car wash industry. 

“We have a brand called Great White Car Wash, great white like the shark. We’ve got a big shark (in our branding). We both develop and run car washes,” Schatz explained. “We are just about to open our sixth car wash in Airdrie (Alta.).”

Schatz said the car wash business is evolving with advanced technology and more sustainable practices. 

“We are using the state-of-the-art, U.S.-style technology. They call them high-speed express tunnels. Our tunnels can process up to 100, 120 cars an hour, and they use about one-third the water of a traditional rollover car wash,” he explained. “All our chemicals are biodegradable, and we reclaim typically 60 to 80 per cent of our water.”

With plans to expand the Great White brand, StoreWest recently took a major step.

“There’s not a lot of real brand names in car wash in Canada,” he said. “We think there’s a really good opportunity for a consistent quality brand in Canada. I think there’s a lot of growth for car wash in Canada. It just has to be done right."

That means more technology, and more investment.

“We have just constituted with our lead investor, Meckelborg Financial Group, a car wash fund. We’re rolling up all six of our car washes into that fund, and then we’re going to use that as a platform to grow, first across Western Canada and then potentially beyond.”

StoreWest's foundation in self-storage

At least for now, however, StoreWest’s core remains in the self-storage space - the company's foundation from Day One.

 “That’s where we started. We started with our first site in Chestermere, Alta.,” Schatz said.

Its growth has been significant.

 “We created a self-storage fund called the ICM Bluebird Canadian Self-Storage Fund (with Meckelborg and ICM Asset Management). We’ve got about a quarter billion (dollars) in there in assets under management. We’ve got about another quarter billion outside of the fund, and we’ve got about a quarter billion in development,” Schatz said.

All of StoreWest’s storage developments are under the Bluebird Self Storage brand.

 “We met the Bluebird guys in 2019. Really liked the brand. They started operating a couple of our assets and did well. We just got to the point where we started doing more and more with them,” Schatz said. “They have a great operating company and brand. We focus on the development. It’s a good complement that way.”

The ownership model is also diversified. 

“We and our investors own those buildings, either through our fund or through different investment vehicles. Often we partnered with Bluebird on them,” he added.

There's a shift in focus within self-storage

Schatz said the shift from industrial to lifestyle-oriented products is driving evolution from "old generation to next generation" self storage.

“The face of storage in Canada is changing. It is changing from industrial to more commercial use. It is changing from a product that people didn’t invest any time in the amenities and how it looked. So much higher quality,” Schatz explained.

“We call it lifestyle storage. Back then, many people were buying, but not as many people were building. And we realized if we could be a developer, we would be able to build what we wanted, where we wanted, how we wanted.”

That ethos is visible in StoreWest’s focus today. 

“We build class-A sites in major cities in high-barrier-to-entry locations. And we build them bigger, we build them, what we think, nicer. And what we’re doing is building the future of storage, not the past,” he said.

The Mahogany site in Calgary is an example. 

“The Mahogany one is right in the middle of one of the most affluent communities in all of Calgary. It’s kitty corner from the Sobeys. We eventually got a unanimous approval to put the storage there, and it has been unbelievably successful,” Schatz said. “We’re just over a year old. We’re over 50 per cent occupied. We’re getting excellent rates. The people have embraced it.”

Location among the new trends

The shift in location strategy is critical to StoreWest’s success. 

“People want us where they live, work and play, they don’t want to drive to an industrial park. And 60 per cent of the people who are decision makers in storage are women. So women are like, ‘I don’t want to go to some scary industrial park. I want to go across the street from the Sobeys and access my storage,’ ” he said. “If we build a good product in the community where people live, work, and play, they will use it.

"We’ll get quicker lease-up, we’ll get strong rates and they’ll be stickier tenants.”

Storage industry growth is being driven by several trends. 

“The obvious one is density,” Schatz said. “In the 1990s, the average apartment in Toronto was over 1,000 square feet. Nowadays, that same apartment is 600–650 square feet. So people don’t even have room to store their Christmas decorations. I believe that storage supports density. Storage supports multifamily. We are, in effect, the garage or basement for multifamily.”

Another key driver is the increase in home-based businesses meaning people need storage space, boardrooms and other such facilities. Today's storage facilities truly are a far cry from their industrial predecessors. 

“They’re multi-storey. Our average storage facility is about 120,000 gross floor area, maybe about 86,000 to 90,000 net usable. We have security cameras, motion sensor lights, bigger offices that showcase units, and we staff all our sites,” Schatz said. Many even offer boardrooms to rent.

Convincing municipalities to embrace this next generation of storage has also been part of the mission.

 “I remember my first meeting with a city official. We’re like, ‘We’re going build storage.’ He’s like, ‘Oh God, no.’ And then we showed him the picture of what we were going to build. He goes, ‘Well, this would work. I like this,’ ” Schatz said. “It’s overcoming the bias that the city officials have, so they understand why we should be where we are.”