The future of the sector?

Feldman Cos. is developing a new 970-unit self-storage facility in Miami, with Naples-based DeAngelis Diamond on board as the project's general contractor.

The contractor intends to break ground on the 112,500-square-foot project, to be called Sunnybrook Storage, next month.

The $9.5 million project, slated for completion in April 2019, is being built from a design by Blue Projects USA.

Pretty standard stuff, save for one glaring exception: the building's height.

The 1011 Sunnybrook Road project is expected to rise eight stories, and mix a parking garage in with the climate-controlled self-storage units.

But Mike Mele, senior managing director of investments for commercial real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap, in Tampa, and executive director of its national self-storage practice, says going vertical is not all that unusual — even for self-storage.

“In urban areas, especially, where the cost of land can be so expensive, there is a trend toward going above one story,” he says. “Over the past 10 years or so, the industry has certainly moved into multistory development, and the consumer market has largely absorbed and embraced the idea of going up an elevator, so it doesn't matter whether the self-storage units are on the second floor or the eighth floor.”

Along the Gulf Coast, Mele notes there's a multistory self-storage project in the Channelside District, in Tampa, and in St. Petersburg's Skyway Marina District, Phillips Development and Realty is planning to include self-storage in a $77 million mixed-use tower that will also house apartments and retail space.