11 Feb 2019
The Hampshire Companies and Harrison Street today announced a joint venture partnership to develop modern, institutional-quality self storage facilities along the I-95 Corridor from Washington D.C. to Boston.
Hampshire and Harrison Street also announced the first investment of the joint venture, which will be the ground-up development of a seven-story self storage facility along Interstate 95 in Providence, R.I. and is expected to break ground in the first quarter of 2019.
According to the announcement, Providence’s high population density, superior accessibility, and lack of institutional quality facilities align well with The Hampshire Companies’ rigorous, time-tested site-selection criteria. Over the next several months, The Hampshire Companies and Harrison Street plan to announce several self storage development projects as the firms continue to grow their self storage portfolio.
“Although the eastern United States presents tremendous opportunity for self storage development, it is among the most crowded and competitive in the United States, which makes it difficult for new investors to enter the market,” said James E. Hanson II, president and chief executive officer of The Hampshire Companies.
“Our strategic programmatic partnership with Harrison Street provides us with a unique opportunity to successfully deploy capital into an increasingly competitive marketplace. It also enables our team to build upon our track record of success and pursue additional self storage development opportunities over the next several years.”
Harrison Street is one of the leading real estate investment management firms exclusively focused on the education, healthcare and storage sectors. Headquartered in Chicago, the firm employs a 140-person team and has $18 billion in assets under management. It has significant experience investing in storage facilities across the U.S. Since inception in 2005, Harrison Street has invested $2.0 billion across 223 self storage properties and has sold 137 self storage properties for a gross transaction value of $1.0 billion.
Christopher Merrill, co-founder and chief executive officer of Harrison Street said, “We are pleased to partner with Hampshire, a best-in-class storage developer, as we identify attractive investment opportunities in a region with favorable demographics and high barriers to entry. Hampshire’s proven track record make them a valuable partner for our team, and I am excited to leverage our deep sector expertise and resources that will benefit our investors and partners.”
The Hampshire Companies is a full-service, private real estate firm based in Morristown, New Jersey. For decades, the company has been one of the nation’s premier self storage developers, delivering modern, institutional-quality facilities to underserved, high-barrier-to-entry markets throughout the Eastern U.S. Leveraging a time-tested and data-backed site selection and due diligence process along with a highly-experienced project management team, Hampshire has repositioned or developed 33 self storage facilities with an aggregate value of over $440 million since 2012.
Presently, Hampshire has 12 self storage development projects underway aggregating $217 million of investment across the eastern United States and is targeting another 12 additional projects with an aggregate value of over $215 million in the pipeline.
