Wasatch Storage Partners enters DFW storage market

The Utah-based firm already has four facilities across the Austin metro

Wasatch Storage Partners CEO Bret Durfee and UTEX Fort Worth Self Storage at 3863 Southwest Loop 820 (Wasatch Storage Partners, Google Maps)
Wasatch Storage Partners CEO Bret Durfee and UTEX Fort Worth Self Storage at 3863 Southwest Loop 820 (Wasatch Storage Partners, Google Maps)

A Utah-based investor is banking on Texas’s hot storage market to generate cold cash.

Wasatch Storage Partners, which has over 20 facilities across the nation and four in Texas, is planning a 108,700-square-foot three-story cold storage unit in Fort Worth. The development will be located at 3863 Southwest Loop 820, and cost an estimated $8 million. Construction will begin by early next year and is expected to be operational in 2024.

This move appears to be Wasatch’s first venture in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. The firm has already completed facilities in the Austin suburbs of Pflugerville and Hutto, as well as two others within the city of Austin.

The Austin metro was an attractive opportunity for Wasatch, because it also deals in self storage. The city ranked as one of the top ten markets for self-storage construction over the previous decade, placing ninth with 6.5 million square feet from 2011 to 2020.

The firm likewise sees Dallas as a good fit.

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“It’s just a market we like. Good demographics, good story, plus half of our office is based out of Dallas,” said Justin Barnes, UTEX Storage Partners, an officiate of Wasatch overseeing the development of the Fort Worth facility.

The firm is bullish on Texas due to other healthy indicators, including a thriving housing market. It has also purchased operating facilities in San Antonio, Barnes said when reached for comment.

Currently, Wasatch has no other development plans for the Dallas market, but will not rule it out if the market continues to grow.

The firm also has facilities in Arizona, Minnesota, Washington, California and Colorado.

Other notable storage deals in the DFW region include a Class A industrial cold storage facility in the suburb of Denton that traded to an institutional buyer back in October for an undisclosed sum, and earlier this year, a two-unit self-storage portfolio sold in Fort Worth for about $23 million.

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