Cal Ammons paints the floor of a storage unit at the newly refurbished Secure Place Storage in Tulsa. STEPHEN PINGRY / Tulsa World
You'll probably never see Tulsa's Secure Place Storage on A&E's "Storage Wars" reality show.
"We just don't have that many fortunes stored here in cardboard boxes," principal operator J. Dale Schlotz hauer said, referring to the television episodes showing its "star" bidders sometimes making thousands of dollars in profit from auctions of foreclosed lockers.
Instead, he said people who've been displaced by apartment fires or changes in life status or employment bring their everyday belongings to Secure Place - and other businesses like it - to store behind its 8-foot wrought iron fence with armed security guards and its thick concrete outer walls with sheet-metal inner walls on metal studs for fire safety until their lives are ready for their stuff to come home again.
SPACE PLACE
J. Dale Schlotzhauer: "The folks we see, day in and day out, are in transition, so ... we're attuned to that and understand it ... ."
"Most of the people are in some kind of life transition - their parents have passed away and they're selling the house and need to store precious keepsakes. The folks we see, day in and day out, are in transition so our sensitivity to that is pretty high, more so than the average storage company because we're attuned to that and understand it, having seen it at many other self storage lots," said Schlotz hauer.
The former Rite Place Storage mini-storage facility, purchased in May by former Tulsan P. Andrew Limes, was built in the late 1970s and had fallen into disrepair. Limes and co-investor Schlotzhauer are spending up to $600,000 on property improvements "to change the image of this small storage facility" at Interstate 44 and the Broken Arrow Expressway.
Limes is a native Tulsan, who graduated with an accounting degree from Northeastern State University at Tahlequah, after playing basketball there - before leaving Tulsa in 1981 to study in Denver at the University of Colorado, through 1983.
"Andy wanted to reinvest in the Tulsa community," Schlotzhauer said. "He cherishes Tulsa as a good place to grow up - he has Tulsa roots. It's a good midwestern, conservative community with basic family values of hard work - the kinds of good things about Tulsa that every Tulsan will tell you about."
Schlotzhauer came to Tulsa to find one that needed fixing up - as a project they could collaborate on - and found the owner of this business who wanted to sell.
The new owners added high intensity light fixtures to provide improved lighting on the property (replacing old incandescents with LED flood lights) and engaged local security firm Black Diamond Security to patrol the property after business hours to assure customers they are doing all that is possible to protect stored belongings, Schlotzhauer said.
There will be 504 storage units in two varieties - 10-by-10-foot for $50 per month and 10-by-20-foot for $80 per month. The firm is running a "$1 move-in special" to bring in residents and small businesses from Tulsa and surrounding communities.
Site manager Robin Rotert knows that "Storage Wars" may be a hit with millions of viewers but cautioned star-crossed auction hunters that "there are no such bargains at most Tulsa self-storage units."
First of all, there's consideration for those at the unseen end of the auction - the people who are losing rights to their locker. Oklahoma law gives storage customers 37 days to pay up after they have quit paying rent, and they must be notified by certified U.S. mail before the locker is readied for auction.
"When they sign for their letters and we get ready for auctions, we run notices two weeks apart in the Tulsa World announcing we will have an auction and an auctioneer comes in from Yukon (Okla.)," she said. "Their unit number and name have to appear in the paper and if they don't come and pay in full, we auction their stuff off."
The show "Storage Wars" is not the only indication of the sector's economic growth nationwide. The industry generated more than $22 billion in revenue last year from its more than 50,000 units, according to the Self Storage Association.
"Storage Wars," which premiered on A&E in 2010, highlights the efforts of various teams that bid against each other at auctions. They buy the contents of abandoned or unpaid lockers and try to make a profit.
The show is controversial. One of its former cast members, Dave Hester, has filed a lawsuit claiming the show is rigged.
Secure Place Storage
Address: 6590 E. Skelly Drive in Tulsa
Founded: May 16, 2013
Employees: 4
Phone: 918-622-8434
Email: manager@secureplacestorage.com
Phil Mulkins 918-699-8888
phil.mulkins@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: A place for everything
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