Cedar Creek Capital’s owner, Ron Osborne, worked alongside AJ Osborne, his son and the CEO of the company, to take on the challenge of a lifetime: the conversion of an abandoned newspaper building into an 876-unit self-storage facility. Their success in this project soon became widely recognized by industry peers; it also caught the attention of MSM and earned it the 2024 Conversion Facility of the Year title.
The building, however, didn’t belong to just any newspaper. It was the headquarters of the Idaho Statesman, the leading newspaper in the Boise area. Its historical value and prime location were the highlight of their pitch to investors and partners such as Janus International and Tenant Inc., both of which were fundamental in making sure the inside of the installation had a modern atmosphere, as opposed to the outside. The building’s exterior was kept almost intact; very few changes were made (signage and other small improvements) to keep the façade as close to the original as possible.
Ron and AJ Osborne have been working together for as long as they can remember. AJ heard of the sale and oversaw the entire process of purchasing the iconic building. The father-son duo comes from a background in finance and has worked together at the investment fund since it was founded in 2004; with the mission to create investment opportunities in the self-storage industry, it now has a total of 25 self-storage facilities in its portfolio.
Within this project, Ron was excited to invest in a landmark from their city with a great space and documentation that already allowed for self-storage businesses—a big find in the area. However, for AJ, the building was a purchase of a lifetime, as he recalls visiting the edifice on school trips when he was a young boy.
Originally built in 1968, it had already been remodeled four times to comply with construction codes and expanded many times as the newspaper grew over the years.
When AJ got the call from an old employee about acquiring the building before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he went into bidding war mode to get the space. Soon after, as the virus quickly spread around the city, most interested parties withdrew their bids. He managed to acquire the entire lot for about half of the initial starting price, as the world was catapulted into a recession as most businesses had to close their doors for lockdown and continue their operations in a fully remote manner.
In the end, AJ went into the project without an actual conversion plan and only one previous conversion experience as a background. Considering the amount of work the 115,000-square-foot property needed, this initial saving made it a worthy investment in the end.
Joining in on this venture, the Osbornes counted on the many years of experience brought together by Cedar Creek Capital’s in-house architect Chuck Tookey, the construction team from Forge Building Company, and a little help from their long-time business partners at Janus International to create the now award-winning conversion.
As Boise locals, both the president of Forge Building Company, Hamish Bell, and Tookey were excited to work on the landmark from their hometown. However, unlike Bell, who has had similar previous experience, Tookey was at first overwhelmed by the size and intricacies of the project; nevertheless, getting to be a part of the team that would give the vacant building a new life instead of razing it sounded refreshing, as he hates when people demolish historical buildings. "We are demolishing our history,” Tookey says. After undertaking the successful project, he is sure he can manage any challenge in his career that comes his way.
At the beginning of the process, as COVID-19 hit and slowed development, they decided to convert the open space into a parking lot to generate revenue that could help cover costs. However, that is a temporary feature; the goal is to transform it into an outdoor self-storage space soon.
The actual building consists of five different areas, and because of its large scale, the project was divided into four phases to allow for partial occupancy earlier—an ambitious idea that didn’t get to see the time of day due to the fire suppression.
The first step of the project was to strip the entire inside of the building down to the bare bones, a decision made due to the age of the construction which had already been remodeled many times and had an initial floor plan that didn’t make sense for a self-storage business.
The next step was to create a seismic gap between the old and the new construction, which made the original construction take on the role of a frame to the new construction, as it is such a known and beloved landmark in the city, while allowing for a fresh and modern facility inside.
For better customer traffic, they decided to dig a new elevator pit. This project included removing part of the existing roof to make room for a penthouse due to the height of the equipment.
An important part of the work involved in the conversion was the installation of a new lighting system and a new concentric diffuser, which is responsible for heating and cooling the entire building from one spot; it’s a cost-efficient alternative to the old hard duct ventilation system that had to be installed in every single one of the units. Other costly changes included a new HVAC unit, new fire sprinklers, a fire pump, and a riser room, all of which they knew they would have to replace from the start due to the age and the state of the building.
A costly surprise that showed up along the way was a tilted concrete structure that had to be reinforced with columns placed on the outside, creating a nice feature that would eventually “help define an entrance on the side of the building,” as the team found the east section of the construction required customers to go through quite a bit of leg work to get to because the original main entrance was located all the way on the other side of the building.
Afterward, Forge Building Company and Tookey worked alongside Janus to create the unit mix, which had to be changed many times along the way due to the demands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Storelocal Storage has been an early adopter of the Nokē Smart Entry system and has a close working relationship with Janus International/Nokē that has spanned many years. The Osbornes had already worked with Janus on a previous conversion and mentioned the immense amount of experience and knowledge they gained about what it takes to do a conversion and how to overcome many issues that inevitably appear along the way during the experience.
John Bilton, director of western Nokē sales at Janus International, who joined the company when they acquired Nokē Smart Entry back in December of 2018, worked closely with the Osbornes in their first conversion, a large-scale endeavor in Nevada, and remembers the experience to this day as being “very ambitious at the time,” as it delivered a fully digital onboarding and app-based tenant experience that is still fully operational today. “We learned that every building has a unique set of issues related to connectivity, ingress, egress, and circulation of foot and car traffic,” Bilton says. “We learned how to maximize the layout and unit mix and to build using the existing characteristics of the building.”
The pandemic heavily affected the unit mix configuration of this new project, as the demand for storage increased and the needs changed quickly. “Creating multiple on-site changes, adding units, and adding buildings in the parking field were additional revenue streams and challenges.” However, it all worked out in the end, and the facility ended up with 11 entry points and over a thousand units.
Janus provided doors and hallways, Nokē Smart Entry for all roll-up doors and entry points onto the property and into the building, and Moveable Additional Storage Structures (MASS) in the parking field for single-story drive-up units that are outfitted with Nokē One latches on the doors for a modern, automated tenant experience.
Storelocal Storage is part of Tenant Inc., sharing core values and the mission to bring innovation and freedom to self-storage operators. So, it comes as no surprise the new facility, which aims to align the tradition with the modern by reformulating the old historical building while providing a modern and smart experience to customers, would use their software like all other Storelocal facilities.
For Lance Watkins, founder and CEO of Tenant Inc., the power of their system lies in the possibility to pick and mix different software to bring the best-tailored experience and solution for facilities. Much like with Microsoft, you need a package with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more to get the best experience and solutions, and Tenant’s various offerings all work together to meet demands and overcome issues self-storage operators experience.
The company’s property management software, Hummingbird, is probably the most prominent system at the Storelocal Storage Curtis facility, but all of Tenant Inc.’s software combined is the key to bringing the best experience and solutions to different issues, as “We need a full technology stack to operate our businesses.”
The Osbornes decided to tackle the marketing by utilizing a good mixture of the best of both old-school tactics and new marketing trends, which included a ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by vendors and partners who were eager to visit the unique location and finally see the results of the three-year conversion, especially since the outside didn’t give many clues on the big changes that were happening on the inside.
The entire process was well documented from the beginning, and the footage was turned into a YouTube video that played a great role in the marketing of the place as it managed to gather attention to the process itself, leaving many curious eyes wondering what the next step was going to be and how the project, once completed, would look.
Online strategies like “key coding and SEO for the location, were used to try to leverage the interest of the project into the marketing, which helped the grand opening.” Outside of traditional methods like ad spend, they also “focused their energy into creating organic and alternative ways to create attention and drive SEO to the location. On top of that, a big push to internalize and bring to the headquarters the sales process, as opposed to just on site or a random call center, which dramatically increased our close rate.”
As for the old-school marketing tactics, they took advantage of the recent increase in the influx of new residents moving to Boise from different cities since the beginning of the pandemic, which resulted in an attempt on the part of the city to create affordable housing, resulting in smaller living spaces, to send out flyers to several of the new different apartment complexes that are in the vicinity, as that is a big part of their target customers.
The result has been steady growth since its official opening back in July, especially for customers seeking a climate-controlled facility, which is by itself a big differentiator when it comes to nearby competitors.
Owner: Cedar Creek Capital
Management Company: Self Storage Admin
Builder: Forge Building Company
Architect: Chuck Tookey with Cedar Creek Architecture and Design
Door and Security Provider: Janus International/Nokē Smart Entry
Management Software: Hummingbird by Tenant Inc.
Victória Oliveira is a senior writer with over a decade of content experience under her belt. Her work has been featured on Darling Magazine, Elite Daily, The Culture-ist, Matador Network, and more.