Empty Big Box Stores Get New Purpose

March 4, 2008

When big box retailers close, the giant stores are often left to decay. Urban planners consider vacant big boxes a destabilizing factor, depressing property values, attracting vandals, and breeding crime.

Budget Development Partners is turning these buildings into climate-controlled storage facilities, a business that the company’s owner Reade DeCurtins says is growing in the face of housing trends that discourage backyard sheds and other kinds of home storage.

Budget Development has turned big boxes into 26 storage facilities in Toronto, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Florida. Typical renovation costs $7.5 million, DeCurtins says.

Posted in Local Business, Real Estate