Article

Where Are They Now?
Catchings Up With Some Of The Self-Storage Industry's Forerunners
by: Jennifer LeClaire

Mini-Storage Messenger
January 2004

The self-storage industry has changed dramatically in the past 25 years-and so have the people that drove those changes. As the industry evolved, so did the careers of the entrepreneurs who seized opportunities to make their marks on a new business landscape. More than two decades later, some are planning retirement, while others are still planning new developments.

Of course, when you gather industry forerunners together, you are bound to hear fond memories and lots of quirky stories. Consider the operator that offered new tenants a $1 fee on the second month's rent. Somehow when no one was looking, a tenant crammed300 old tires into a space and was never heard from again. It cost the operator $6 a tire to dispose of them. (Ouch!)

Or what about the lawsuit over the contents of a mini-storage unit allegedly sold improperly? The tenant, a law firm, claimed there was vital evidence inside. When an injunction ordered management to open the unit, it was empty. The attorneys had loaded up the wrong unit!

Then there was the very strange self-storage customer who entered his unit almost every day and stayed inside of it for hours on end. The facility manager finally got suspicious and inspected the tenant's unit. The only items inside were a floor lamp, a space heater, an easy chair, and a stack of books. When questioned, the tenant later told management that it was the only quiet place he could find to read.

Because reminiscing about the good old days is always fun, Mini-Storage Messenger caught up with more than a dozen industry pioneers to trace their career paths from yesteryear to today-and into tomorrow.

Kenneth Piken
Kenneth Piken was a law student working in his father's firm, Piken & Associates 25 years ago. The New York State Self-Storage Association had just retained the firm with an immediate purpose: to get a lien law passed. Consequently, Piken & Associates was successful in ending the landlord-tenant woes for operators in the state.

When another legal battle arose in the mid-1980s, the young Piken got his first opportunity to fight the self-storage war against sales taxes. "One of the largest operators in New York was assessed with a year's worth of sales tax," he recalls. "We spearheaded an effort to get a tax ruling to mandate that rental of mini-storage rooms was a non-sales-taxable event, which saved operators in the state millions."

Piken passed the General Counsel torch on to another firm about five years ago but is still active in the self-storage industry. These days he is working on insurance claims, code violations, and new developments. Piken is now readying for what he perceives as a potentially new class of legal challenges in the self-storage industry surrounding portable vaults.

"In terms of portable vaults, a legal question may arise regarding where a moving bailment ends and a non-bailment begins when they come into a mini-storage," Piken explains. "I also see some dramatic changes in financing deals coming down the pike. Major banks are beginning to buy storage properties and lease them back for acceleration of tax buyoffs. That could become significant."

After 25 years practicing self-storage law, Piken has a unique understanding of the business and says he intends to hang around for whatever new legal darts target the self-storage industry.

Kenneth M. Piken, ESQ, is a practicing attorney and senior partner in the New York based law firm of Kenneth Piken & Associates. Mr. Piken was General Counsel for the New York Self Storage Association for over 15 years, has lectured throughout the country, and has written numerous self-storage-related articles for major trade publications.

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This article is provided courtesy of Kenneth J. Piken with the permission of Mini-Storage Messenger magazine. © MiniCo, Inc. All Rights Reserved. It is not intended for further reproduction/distribution without the exclusive permission of MiniCo, Inc. www.minico.com

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