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HomeMy WebLinkAboutA5 Automatic Kiosk • Only the second Kiosk system introduced in Iowa • Onsite presence 24/7 for convenience of our clients • Greets customers • Collect fingerprints,photographs and copies of driver's license • Rents out units • Gives virtual tour of our facility • Emails contract to client(paperless) • Has a call center backup for computer challenge customers • Rents out units &issues personal code for security gate • Takes payments via credit card or checks • Ensures customer identity with ID verification • Issues tenant insurance if needed • Dispenses locks for clients rental unit if needed • Bilingual (English and Spanish)text and voice prompts (2%Ames population is Spanish) • Inside and outside cameras for surveillance for an area of Ames that has vandalism problems in recent years due to increase rental units and decrease home owners in the immediate area • Definitely will improve the local area appearance with our immediate neighbors being the county maintenance building and the Doughboy elevator The location of our property is next to the railroad tracks, county maintenance building, and the Doughboy elevator. When we purchased the property it was zoned industrial, which DID ALLOW for mini storage. Several years later the city rezoned this industrial area to Neighborhood Commercial, when there was a general rezoning of properties throughout the entire city of Ames. Neighborhood Commercial did not allow for mini storage facilities. Prior to my wife and I purchasing this property, the area was being used as a local unauthorized land fill dump. We cleaned up the garbage and had over 100 dump truck loads of dirt hauled in to improve the site through the recommendation of our engineer (Ken Janssen) to ready the site for mini storage. This was the reason we requested and received the variance theee years ago. Since we received the initial variance we learned about an automated kiosk system, which changed our plans of an onsite manager apartment concept. This definitely helped the financial feasibility of this site along with a reorganization of the buildings from 3 storage units to 2 units with interior hallways with camera surveillance. By decreasing to two buildings this will decrease the amount of outside lighting needed. Our entire system will be lit with LED lights, which are environmentally beneficial and will decrease potential light pollution for our neighbors. This type of configuration has become increasing popular in college towns with student renters needing smaller storage units. The history of mini storage has now gone into phase three of its development. It has become much more sophisticated from the early days when someone threw up a pole building. One out. of every ten homeowners will rent a mini-storage unit at one time or another. This will increase the property value which also benefits the city's tax basis for this property. Another benefit of this type of business is the low traffic count. The average mini storage renter lives within 5 miles of their facility and will visit their unit twice. The day they move their items in and the day they move their items out. The internet has changed this industry. Our potential clients will find our location via the internet and be able to determine in a matter of a few clicks if they want to store their items at our facility. Through our kiosk system potential clients can reserve and make initial payments for their rental unit via their home computer or cell phone app. There is an increased need for mini-storage due to the additional amount.of apartment units being built on Mortensen Road and by the Vet School and the proposed apartments on State Street. There is new housing construction west of North Dakota,and the planned new housing off North Dakota and Cameron School Road. When you google mini storage for Ames, you will see on the map that the majority of the storage sites are east of Duff and south of US 30. Several of these systems are also located in the flood plain area, an additional advantage to our location because we definitely are not located in a flood plain. We would like to change our security fencing from aluminum ornamental to commercial black chain link. This is being recommended by our fence contractor due to our location next to county maintenance building. When there are heavy snows being pushed along our driveways and the county yard the chain link will with stand the snow piling better. Aluminum fencing will not take that type of abuse if it were to occur and will not hold up. We feel 6'commercial black chain link not residential chain link will be complementary to our system and will help improve the area appearance. 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