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Arlington Heights settles for Holladay self-storage plan at gateway
Golf Road property was intended to be retail district, but lack of frontage doomed it, developer says
Tim Healy’s Holladay Properties has a big change in mind for a Golf Road entryway into Arlington Heights, but the project amounts to the village’s last resort for the property.
Holladay is set to purchase a pie-shaped parcel at 397 and 401 West Golf Road and tear down retail buildings in order to redevelop the parcel as a three-story, 102,000-square-foot self storage asset, the Daily Herald reported.
Village officials agreed with Holladay that the property’s configuration and lack of Golf Road frontage — it’s a 2.5-acre parcel with only 115 feet along the thoroughfare — make it unsuitable to host apartments, retail or offices.
There are three buildings on the site set to be demolished as part of the project, including one that for 57 years was home to Animal Feed and Needs, a pet store that closed in 2021. Its former landlord is selling the property to Holladay, but the purchase price is so far unknown.
“It’s a tricky site,” Holladay project manager Don Tomei said. “It’s considered a gateway to the village of Arlington Heights and was really intended to be a retail district. But this is a 2.5 acre lot with only 115 feet of frontage on Golf. So it doesn’t make much sense for retail use. However, that does serve to benefit self-storage, where we’re able to hide a relatively large building on a small frontage of road.”
The niche self-storage real estate sector has shined during the pandemic. Big players in the space attribute the rise in demand for self-storage to increasing numbers of deaths, divorces, downsizing and dislocation, and the health crisis figured into generating some of all four.
Recent deals include Buffalo, New York-based Life Storage Inc. paying $10.7 million this month to Chicago-area investors Elliot Berman and James Lapetina for a 65,000-square-foot former retail strip at 2411 Randall Road in Carpentersville that they bought in 2021 for $2.9 million and is now being turned into self storage, public records show.
The asset class’ boom hasn’t been limited to the suburbs, either. In the fall, brothers Alex and Nik Turik’s firm HAN Capital pulled in $32 million with a pair of deals that included the sale of a self-storage property in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood and another in Wilmette, that they spent $17 million total to acquire between 2015 and 2017.
— Sam Lounsberry