Missouri developer seeks to create national self-storage brand

A Missouri-based real estate developer is going beyond its Midwestern roots to grow its self-storage brand.
 
Currently, NorthPoint Development’s Beyond Self Storage brand operates three self-storage facilities. One facility is in the Kansas City, MO, suburb of Overland Park, KS, and the two other facilities are in St. Louis, MO, and the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, MO. NorthPoint is based in the Kansas City suburb of Riverside, MO.
 
Now, NorthPoint is building nine more self-storage facilities: four in the Detroit, MI, market, three in the Pittsburgh, PA, market and two in the Minneapolis, MN, market.
 

A big year ahead
 
Ben Hagedorn, self-storage operations manager at NorthPoint, said the company aims to have 25 self-storage projects open or underway before the end of 2018.
 
“Our goal is to continue to do the right deals, in the right areas, for the right reasons,” Hagedorn told The SpareFoot Storage Beat.
 
By the end of 2020, NorthPoint wants to have 45 self-storage facilities open or under construction around the U.S., he said.
 
“We have goals, but we’re OK to miss them if we’re not finding the best projects,” he said.
 
Hagedorn said the company is taking a buy-and-hold approach to the Beyond Self Storage portfolio. “We have a sophisticated supply-and-demand modeling system that guides our investments,” he said.
 
NorthPoint’s private equity for self-storage investments comes from family offices in the Kansas City area, Hagedorn said. On its website, NorthPoint explains that it never assumes debt to buy land, never leverages projects with excessive debt and never chases attractive cap rates at the expense of long-term value.
 
“Our approach is simple,” NorthPoint says, “and we intend to keep it that way.”
 

The “Beyond” blueprint
 
NorthPoint launched Beyond Self Storage two years ago when it converted part of a hard-to-lease warehouse in suburban Kansas City into a self-storage facility, Hagedorn said. NorthPoint also operates in the industrial, multifamily and senior housing sectors.
 
Typically, a Beyond Self Storage facility encompasses three stories and roughly 100,000 square feet, Hagedorn said. Customer amenities include drive-up access, climate-controlled units, security systems, conference rooms and WiFi service. Beyond Self Storage primarily will add facilities via ground-up development but will consider conversions, Hagedorn said.
 
“We typically won’t be buying existing facilities,” he added.
 
NorthPoint is best known for developing industrial properties. The company has built more than 30 million square feet of Class A industrial space around the country since its founding in 2012. NorthPoint’s industrial tenants include General Motors, Amazon, Walmart, UPS and General Electric.