By: Patrick Wood Self-Storage Real Estate Specialist at JBW Commercial
Across British Columbia and throughout Canada, municipal councils face a constant balancing act when it comes to land use. Competing demands from residential developers, commercial interests, and industrial users mean that every rezoning application is scrutinized for its community benefit. Self-storage facilities, unfortunately, often find themselves on the wrong side of that scrutiny. Many councillors and planners view storage facilities as low-value uses of land that contribute little to the community. That perception is not only outdated but fundamentally wrong. When evaluated on the merits, self-storage development checks nearly every box that municipalities claim to prioritize: steady tax revenue, minimal infrastructure burden, job creation, and genuine community benefit.
A Reliable and Growing Tax Base
Self-storage facilities generate consistent property tax revenue from the moment they open their doors. Well-located storage facilities in Canadian markets routinely achieve stabilized occupancy rates above ninety percent within three to four years of opening. In BC, where property assessments reflect market value, a modern self-storage facility on even a modest parcel of land can generate significantly more tax revenue per acre than many retail or light industrial alternatives. Importantly, this revenue is remarkably stable. Self-storage demand is driven by life events that occur in every economic cycle: people move, downsize, divorce, renovate, inherit belongings, and start businesses regardless of whether the broader economy is booming or contracting. Municipalities that welcome storage development are effectively adding a recession-resistant revenue stream to their tax base.
Minimal Demand on Municipal Services
One of the strongest arguments in favour of self-storage is what it does not require from a municipality. Compared to residential development, which demands schools, parks, transit, water and sewer capacity, policing, and fire services, a self-storage facility places almost no burden on public infrastructure. Traffic generation is remarkably low. The average storage customer visits their unit once or twice a month, and most of that traffic occurs on weekends and outside of peak commuting hours. A two-hundred-unit storage facility generates a fraction of the vehicle trips that a similarly sized retail centre or even a small apartment building would produce. Water and sewer demand is negligible. There are no students to educate, no residents to police, and the fire risk profile of a modern, code-compliant storage facility is minimal. For municipalities struggling with the infrastructure costs of rapid growth, particularly in fast-expanding communities across the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island, and the BC Interior, self-storage offers development that pays its way without asking for much in return.
Enabling Housing and Supporting Residents
There is an often-overlooked connection between self-storage and the housing challenges that dominate municipal agendas across Canada. As communities densify and average unit sizes shrink, residents increasingly lack the space to store seasonal items, recreational equipment, business inventory, and personal belongings. Self-storage fills this gap, effectively serving as an extension of the home. Without adequate storage options nearby, residents of smaller condominiums and apartments face a lower quality of life, and the push toward densification becomes harder for councils to sell to existing neighbourhoods. Self-storage also plays a critical role during housing transitions. When residents are between homes due to a sale, renovation, or relationship change, affordable and accessible storage allows them to navigate these transitions without crisis. For municipalities that are actively encouraging densification and smaller housing forms to address affordability, self-storage is not a competing land use but a complementary one that makes compact living viable.
Supporting Small Business and the Local Economy
Self-storage has quietly become one of the most important pieces of infrastructure for small business in Canada. Entrepreneurs use storage units for inventory, tools, equipment, documents, and seasonal stock. For a small business owner, renting a climate-controlled storage unit at a few hundred dollars a month is vastly more affordable than leasing dedicated commercial or warehouse space. In communities where commercial lease rates have climbed sharply, self-storage provides a flexible, low-commitment alternative that allows small businesses to start, grow, and operate without the overhead of a traditional commercial lease. Many home-based businesses, which municipalities increasingly encourage through updated zoning bylaws, rely on nearby storage to keep inventory and equipment out of residential neighbourhoods. Self-storage facilities also create local jobs, both during construction and in ongoing operations, and they support a network of local service providers including security companies, property maintenance firms, and moving companies.
Modern Facilities Are Good Neighbours
The image of self-storage as rows of corrugated metal sheds behind chain-link fencing is decades out of date. Modern self-storage facilities in BC and other major Metro markets feature attractive architectural designs, professional landscaping, and building envelopes that meet or exceed the aesthetic standards of surrounding commercial development. Multi-storey, climate-controlled facilities are now the norm in urban and suburban markets, and they use land far more efficiently than traditional single-storey drive-up facilities. Many newer facilities incorporate retail frontage, mixed-use elements, or design features that actively improve the streetscape. Noise, odour, and environmental impacts are essentially nonexistent. For municipalities concerned about the visual and experiential quality of their commercial corridors, a well-designed storage facility is a far better neighbour than many permitted commercial uses.
Productive Use of Difficult Sites
Self-storage is one of the few commercial uses that can viably develop sites that would otherwise sit vacant or underperforming. Irregular lot shapes, parcels adjacent to highways or rail corridors, sites with grade challenges, and properties in transitional zones between residential and industrial areas are often well-suited to storage development but unattractive to other users. Rather than leaving these sites as vacant lots or accepting marginal uses that generate complaints, municipalities can encourage storage development that brings these properties onto the tax rolls and into productive community use. In many BC communities, allowing self-storage on otherwise difficult parcels is simply smart land use planning.
A Call to Rethink the Perception
Municipal planning departments across Canada would benefit from updating their understanding of the self-storage industry. This is not a niche or marginal land use. The Canadian self-storage market has grown substantially over the past decade, driven by urbanization, immigration, housing densification, and evolving consumer and business needs. The industry is increasingly professionalized, with sophisticated operators investing in technology, sustainability, and community engagement. When a self-storage development application arrives at a municipal planning counter, it should be evaluated on the same objective criteria applied to any commercial proposal: tax contribution, infrastructure impact, traffic generation, design quality, and community benefit. On every one of those measures, self-storage competes favourably with most alternatives.
Jurisdictions that recognize this reality and create clear, welcoming pathways for self-storage development will find themselves with stronger tax bases, better-served residents, and more productive use of their land. Those that continue to resist will simply push storage demand and tax dollars to neighbouring jurisdictions that are willing to say yes.
Municipalities seeking to enhance their understanding of the role of storage in future planning and land use decisions are invited to contact us for a comprehensive discussion on relevant policies. We are available to assist you in gaining a holistic perspective on storage development within your community.
Patrick Wood – JBW Commercial
pat@jbwcommercial.com
Related reading from the Self Storage Basics series: Province-by-Province Basics: Zoning, Lien Rights and Tenant Rules and Development vs. Conversion vs. Acquisition. Full series at the Basics hub.
1 comment