Crimson Canyon Storage at the Loop 101 and Northern in Glendale is wrapping up, and the finishes look sharp. It is a good example of where storage development in the Phoenix metro has gone: better sites, better buildings, and far less tolerance for schedule slip.
Ten years ago most storage in the West Valley was single-story drive-up product on inexpensive land at the edge of development. Land is not inexpensive anymore, and the good corners are not empty. The result is infill — smaller parcels, tighter setbacks, more visible architecture, and neighbors who will be looking at the building every day.
Infill sites change the construction approach in three concrete ways.
First, logistics. On a five-acre greenfield site you can stage material almost anywhere. On a constrained corner near a major freeway interchange, deliveries have to be sequenced, laydown is limited, and crane picks are scheduled around traffic. We plan site logistics as a formal deliverable on these jobs rather than letting it sort itself out in the field.
Second, design expectations. Municipalities in the West Valley now review storage buildings the way they review retail — massing, articulation, materials, screening, landscape. That means more finish scope, more submittal review, and more coordination between the architect's elevations and what the panel and stucco crews can actually build to tolerance.
Third, verticality. Multi-story climate-controlled buildings bring elevators, fire suppression, stair enclosures and a real mechanical system into a product type that used to need almost none of it. The MEP coordination effort on a three-story storage building is closer to a small medical office than to the drive-up product it replaced.
The fundamentals that keep these projects on schedule have not changed: resolve the utilities before the pad, lock the unit mix before framing, release long-lead packages early, and keep one superintendent who has built this product type before running the field.
Crimson Canyon joins a long list of storage facilities we have delivered across the metro, from single-story drive-up to multi-story conditioned buildings. Each one teaches something that goes into the next.
If you are looking at a storage site — infill or otherwise — our Scottsdale office is at (480) 994-0400. We would rather have the conversation before the design is finished than after.
