Converting Existing Buildings into Self Storage: Is Your Property Suitable?

Not every self storage facility starts with the perfect plot of empty land. Some of the most successful sites Kuboid has worked on began life as something else entirely: a redundant farm building, a railway arch, a warehouse no longer fit for its original purpose. The list grows every year. Converting an existing structure can be faster, cheaper, and more characterful than building from scratch. But unfortunately, not every building makes the cut.

What makes a property suitable?

The starting point is always the same: does the structure suit the way people will use it? A few key factors decide that.

1. Access and location: Self storage lives or dies on convenience. As our latest Locked In vodcast mentioned: location, location, location! A former chicken shed or barn tucked away on a working farm can work brilliantly if it sits near a decent road and a catchment of local demand. That’s exactly the logic behind farm diversification projects like Barn to Box, one of our recent conversions.
2. Structure and floor loading: Existing buildings need enough headroom and floor strength to take internal partitioning, mezzanines, or stacked units. Agricultural and industrial buildings often perform well here; older or listed structures need closer scrutiny and maybe more work.
3. Planning and use class: Converting a building’s use almost always triggers a planning conversation. Railway arches, for instance, come with their own quirks around access and services, but as our work with Plus Space London shows, arches can convert into genuinely strong urban storage sites once those constraints are worked through.
4. Services and security: Power, water, drainage, and the ability to fit modern access control and security systems all need checking early, not discovered halfway through the build.

Why it’s worth the assessment

Every conversion project is different, which is exactly why an early site assessment matters more here than in a new-build. Get it right, and you end up with a facility that has genuine character and a lower build cost than starting from nothing. Get it wrong, and hidden structural or planning issues can stall a project for months.
If you’ve got a building you think might have a second life in self storage, that’s precisely the conversation worth having early with us.