BRIGHT FUTURE LOOKS IN STORE
THE Gold Coast’s Balanda family have taken another step towards becoming kings of the city’s storage game.
Brothers Brett and Scott Balanda and brother-in-law Greg Seymour are putting the finishing touches on their new Storage King facility at 118 Minnie St, Southport, after an outlay of $5.5 million.
They expect to open the 400-unit, three-level complex in the next few weeks after a nine-month build by Storeco.
Storeco designed and manufactured the steel facility at its base in Orange, NSW, before shipping the panels to Southport to be assembled onsite by its contractors.
The facility has 3600sq m of floorspace (1200sq m per floor) and its units range from 1sq m lockers to 18sq m single garages.
The family embarked on the new project after reaching capacity at its 520 Storage King facility nearby at 16 Pinter St. Brett Balanda said they entered the Southport market in 2014 after noting that a surge in development in Southport had created growing demand from apartment dwellers seeking storage space. “There was a hole in the Southport market and we wanted to develop business here,” Brett said.
“We are looking to own these for decades to come.”
The family previously owned Storage King facilities in Kingston and Beenleigh, which they sold to Abacus Property Group in 2014 and 2016 respectively.
Brett said they targeted people who owned or occupied one and two-bedroom units, with students making up a significant part of its customer base.
He said the requirements for space were different with the average Minnie St unit size 6.2sq m, 30 per cent smaller than their Beenleigh facility.
Brett said once the new facility is open, they expect to grow their customer base to 800 between the two complexes.