The West End Plaza in Pembroke will be adding new public storage spaces. Owners of the facility recently applied to the city to have the building rezoned to allow for 270 indoor storage units. There would be a change to the front of the mall building where there would be a garage door to allow customers to drive into the facility to store or pick up their belongings. There would also be 3 self-storage units located at the rear of the building that would have direct access from the rear yard. The owners say that the storage units will cover 35,000 square feet of the existing West End Plaza. The owners of 1200 Pembroke Street West have been trying to redefine the mall from a traditional use to uses that will help the mall financially. Stores such as Dollarama, the Brick and Peavy Mart now all have direct access from the parking lot.
A study of self-storage units was completed and in 2013 it stated that the length of stay per unit is as follows:
Less than 3 months 13%
3 to 6 months 18%
7-12 months 18%
1-2 years 22%
2+ years 30%
Further the same study showed the following statistics for visits per unit:
More than once a week 6%
About once a week 9%
About once every two weeks 14%
About once per month 32%
3 to 6 times per year 24%
Fewer than 3 times per year 15%
These statistics show that people are renting these units for longer periods of time with the majority of people (32%) visiting the units once a month. Therefore, it can be shown that this use will not generate a lot of traffic or parking issues.
(Written by: Kyle Robinson)
