'We don't need another one': Deer Park residents fight self-storage as Long Island builds more

Joseph Prevete lives just a few houses away from a Deer Park bowling alley that could be turned into a storage facility — a use that he and around 2,000 others in the community vehemently oppose.

Residents in the community, at a public hearing in late July, protested the property owner's application for a zone change that would allow the construction of a two-story, 17,000-square-foot storage facility on the site. The bowling alley was a “symbol of community," they said.

“To put another storage facility here is totally unnecessary,” said Prevete, 57, adding there are already many self-storage facilities on Long Island.

But even if there isn't a desire for more storage units in Deer Park, Long Island remains a significant market for the self-storage industry, experts said, in part due to its high population density and proximity to New York City. 

While demand has slowed since a peak during the pandemic as people sought to renovate, clean out and move homes, many residents still value self-storage facilities as a way to hang onto sentimental keepsakes and store equipment and goods needed for business.

“The amount of new supply that you’re seeing is really just a result of the great economic climate we had a couple of years ago, and then the lead time it takes to get the facility out of the ground,” said Geffen Rodik, director of marketing and self-storage at Men on the Move, based in Woodbury.

That new supply “comes at a time where the residential moving market is low because of high interest rates and high housing costs,” leading to “a little bit of a lull,” he said.

Still, he said, the need for storage units on Long Island remains “tremendous.”

New developments on Long Island

North America is home to the largest self-storage market in the global economy, accounting for more than 47% of $56.81 billion in revenue in 2023, according to a report from Grand View Research, a company that offers market analyses. According to the report, industry revenue in the United States is expected to grow at an average rate of 5% per year between 2024 and 2030.

Across Long Island, there are nearly 200 self-storage facilities, according to data from commercial real estate data companies CoStar Group and Yardi Matrix. 

There are several pending projects across Long Island as well, including two that received planning and zoning approvals so far this year in the Town of Huntington, two open self-storage applications in the Town of Oyster Bay and one pending facility in the Town of Smithtown.

Also, since 2024, developers have filed approximately 15 applications related to storage facilities in the Town of Islip. 

And in Deer Park specifically, there are five such facilities, which fall among a handful of Long Island hamlets with five or more such depots, according to CoStar Group, which publishes commercial real estate data.  

While there are a number of new self-storage facilities in progress on Long Island, not enough is being built to “significantly dampen" demand, said Austin McLeod, senior vice president of the self-storage division at Matthews Real Estate Investment Services, which has offices around the country, including in Manhattan.

A self-storage facility contains two or more spaces that can be rented to store personal property, according to the Town of Babylon, which encompasses the Deer Park facility. There are many types of these units available for individual use, from lockers to climate-controlled rooms with drive-up access, said a spokesperson for self-storage company Extra Space Storage.

Rates for a self-storage unit on Long Island run between

$6

to

$1,340

per month, with a monthly average of $207.

Fewer new facilities have been built in the Northeast in recent years compared with other parts of the country, McLeod said, leading rental rates for storage units in the New York metro area, including Long Island, to be among the highest in the country.

“It’s very challenging to build throughout the NYC metro, so those barriers to entry have enabled rental rates to continue to grow, benefiting those who already own facilities in the market,” he said, noting that challenges include a difficult municipal approval process, finding land to build on, and the overall cost of building the project on Long Island. 

Rates per unit on Long Island run between $6 to $1,340 per month, according to data from commercial real estate research company Yardi Matrix, with an average of $207 per month.

Seventeen large projects are currently under construction in New York, an influx of supply that could potentially lead to lower rates in 2025, Doug Ressler, manager of business intelligence at Yardi Matrix, said in an email. Long Island-specific data was not immediately available. 

On Long Island, Sharon and Jim Matuszewski, of Riverhead, are among those who recently entered the self-storage industry. The couple opened More Storage of Riverhead in late February after purchasing the property near railroad tracks in the hamlet, with multiple dilapidated buildings on the site, in 2019.

The property was already zoned to allow storage facilities, Jim Matuszewski said, and did not face any community pushback.

But, as a “mom-and-pop” business, Jim Matuszewski said, it’s been a struggle to compete against a proliferation of large corporations in the industry. While the couple isn't concerned about any one company in particular, some of the bigger players nationwide include Public Storage and CubeSmart. 

Partly as a way to counter this and bucking the trend of other companies, the couple offers customers fixed rates for two years at a time. The facility is at 50% occupancy, despite being open for a relatively short time, with most customers living on the East End. 

Storage rental rates higher on LI 

The percentage of U.S. households using storage units has steadily increased since the late '80s, according to a June investor presentation from ExtraSpace Storage, hitting a high of 11.1% in 2023.

On a national level, demand was higher during the pandemic, when people put money into their homes, backyards and pools, and took advantage of low interest rates to move, said McKall Morris, communications director at ExtraSpace.

Demand on Long Island, though strong, has slowed since the pandemic, likely due to higher interest rates for mortgages keeping “people at bay from moving into a new home,” said Chris Pliaconis, president of the trade group Long Island Moving and Storage Association.

Long Island is the 57th largest self-storage market in the country, according to a market summary from Yardi Matrix compiled in June.

Along with New York City and northern New Jersey, ExtraSpace Storage facilities in the region have an average occupancy rate of 93.5% — on par with the national average of 93.9%, Morris said.

Yardi Matrix data for the overall self-storage industry in New York and northern New Jersey indicate similar occupancy rates, hitting 92.3% at the end of March.

Rental rates for storage units are higher on Long Island than the rest of the country due to limited land, high population density and urban sprawl, and the Island's proximity to New York City and affluent suburbs, Ressler said.

Long Island also has less self-storage space per capita than the rest of the country, Ressler said, with an average three-mile trade area saturation for Long Island properties at 5.5 square feet per person in February versus 11.2 square feet per person for all properties nationally.

“Demand is still closely tied to home sales and residential mobility, which remain subdued due to high interest rates,” he said. “Urban areas like Long Island may benefit from continued urban density and limited space, which traditionally supports self-storage usage.”

Long Island’s dense population and proximity to New York City make it “a strategic location for new developments,” he said.

'Need a place to put this stuff'

There’s a range of reasons clients have decided to rent units, from storing out-of-season clothing, clearing space in their garage, deciding to downsize and seeking a place to store treasures while their homes are under renovation, Jim Matuszewski said.

It’s also another way for small businesses to store inventory, Pliaconis said.

For Monique Serena, who rents space at Men on the Move facilities in Woodbury, it’s a convenient way to store furniture and decor she uses as part of her business as a real estate agent and home staging specialist.

Men on the Move is also a local business, founded on Long Island in 1985, and Serena said she appreciates the difference between her treatment there versus at facilities owned by national corporations, where prices often go up.

Self storage is becoming a more normal thing. It’s not, ‘Do you have a self-storage unit?’ It’s, ‘Where is your self-storage unit?’

— Geffen Rodik, director of marketing and self-storage at Men on the Move based in Woodbury

She moved to the facilities at Men on the Move a few months ago. She rents just shy of 20 rooms at the warehouse in Woodbury, which is near her office, with different rooms dedicated to different objects. She has two dedicated solely to pillows.

Long Island has a consumer-driven economy, Rodik said. “We can afford to, and we do, buy. … And because we buy, we need a place to put this stuff.”

People might store items with sentimental value, or furniture they don’t need at the moment, or baby furniture and clothes for future children, he said, listing examples of reasons Long Islanders tend to rent storage units.

“Self storage is becoming a more normal thing,” he said. “It’s not, ‘Do you have a self-storage unit?’ It’s, ‘Where is your self-storage unit?’ ”

Pamela Greinke, 62, of Riverhead, started renting units with More Storage, which is near her studio apartment, shortly after the facility opened earlier this year. She once lived in a three-bedroom house and, now that she's downsized, stores sentimental keepsakes, like a cradle handmade by her father, and toys that belonged to her children, in the space. 

She's also the founder and executive director of Hope and Resilience Long Island, a nonprofit dedicated to helping survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, and she taps her units to store donations of clothing and toiletries until they can be distributed. 

Because she doesn't have the extra space to store "all of the things that are special to me," she said, "I have to have them somewhere nearby so that I can get to them when I need them, and not just get rid of everything."