| Construction News Weekly Boat storage in Las Vegas? It seems incongruous that there should be a need
for such a service in this arid part of the country. Les Yoakum, president of Able
Builders, Inc. and partner in Sunrise Storage Partnership, found that the need for the
service was so great, that every time he considered storing his own boat, the best offer
he could find at existing facilities, was a spot on their waiting list.
What really made up his mind to seriously consider developing a boat storage facility,
however, were several scenes in the town of Page, Ariz. Yoakum and a business associate,
Ferry Muscelli, were returning to Las Vegas from a rafting trip on the Colorado. "We
were coming .through Page when we noticed how there were little boat storages all over the
place, and they were all full. We thought, if they were full in a little town like this,
what about Las Vegas, being so close to lake Mead and with its population, Yoakum
explains.
Yoakum and Muscelli formed a partnership for their boat and RV storage venture and
spent about a year looking for a suitable site for the project. "There are two main
routes to the lake and the one I chose was the least occupied by other boat storage
facilities," Yoakum says.
Site selection was only the first time-consuming problem to resolve. Originally, there
were plans to erect a low-income apartment complex on the site and during the zoning
process, a single-family-home residential development, which borders the property on the
east, opposed the plans for a storage facility. "It took nearly two years to get
everything together. We feel they came out ahead," Yoakum says of his new neighbors.
"They have a nice quiet facility next door".
In putting together Sunrise Boat and RV Storage, Yoakum's Able Builders acted as
general contractor. Apple Masonry took care of the block work, but the steel construction
element pre rented a problem initially. The contractor Yoakum had selected for this part
of the contacted Bob Hayworth of Baja Construction Co.
Hayworth takes up the story. "Les called me and basically said:'Here is my budget.
You'll have six weeks in which to do the construction. If you can do it within my budget
in the six weeks, you have a deal, if you can't, I'11 get somebody else.' We signed the
contract and we built [the project] out in five weeks.
Although Hayworth was left little room to maneuver, he was not
put out by the time constraint. "Unlike most of the companies we compete with, we
have our own construction crews," he explains. "We have 60 men who do nothing
but install our prefabricated steel systems." Leaving nothing to chance, Luis Fabian,
vice president of Baja, personally led the 15-man crew that erected the structures at
Sunrise Boat and RV Storage.
Baja Construction designed the facility within
the parameters set by Able Builders. "All the components of the structures were
pre-fabricated, to our specifications, by ASC Pacific, Inc. of Sacramento, Calif., who
also shipped everything to the site. It was like a huge erector jet," Hayworth says.The
components arrived on a site sporting asphalt paving, concrete slabs for the steel
buildings and coderequired block walls. "We drove the holes for the galvanized steel
columns, set them in concrete and erected the structures," Hayworth says. The
interior of the enclosed storage is all steel, as is the framing for the office and
manager's apartment. Roofing is of zinc-alume. The roll-up doors for the enclosed storage
were supplied by Anderson Overhead Door Company and manufactured by Atlas Roll-lite Door
Corp.
Baja Construction's completion of its contract brought phase one of the development of
the 8.5-acre site to a close. This phase consists of 19,400 square feet of enclosed
storage, 35,700 square feet of 12-foot-ceiling-height boat and RV canopies, 2,940 square
feet of car wash and vacuum bay canopies and a 30 foot by 40 foot building for the office
and apartment. approximately 20,000 square feet of open parking completes the picture.
business on May 10, i962. "Things are going very well," Yoakum says. "We
are meeting our projections on the car wash and we are a little over 50 percent occupied
on footage in mid-September. And its filling up more rapidly now than it was a few months
ago. So far the percentages are hitting right on the money, so the second phase will
probably be divided in similar proportion to the first.
One thing about phase two that Yoakum need not worry about is financing. The loan he
arranged for his project with a local bank (he jokes that it was probably the last
commercial loan made in the valley) provides for the bank to release the necessary funds
for the second phase as soon as Sunrise reaches a pre-arranged occupancy level. And,
according to Yoakum, phase two has already been fully permitted. "It worked out
well," he says. "The first phase will carry the entire project. The second phase
will all be our cash flow.
The financing worked out well, and so did the security arrangements. "it was the
perfect piece of property for our needs because of the security around us. On our west
side, we have a concrete drainage channel and on the south, we have a flood channel,"
Yoakum explains. ?These channels are around 50 feet wide and about eight feet deep,
creating a moat effect on two sides of the property. Of the other two sides of the
property, one borders the residential development, and the other faces the street.
To augment these 'natural' security features, there is an on-site manager, security
lighting and an electronically controlled access system, supplied by PTI Access Control
Systems of Scottsdale, Ariz. "We are also in the process of obtaining a video
surveillance system," Yoakum says.
Les Yoakum has been in the building trade for 22 years and has operated Able Builders
since 1979, developing mostly office/warehouse/industrial projects. Sunrise is his first
self-storage project. "Most everything I do, I do for myself. It depends on the
economy, if I can sell the properties I develop, 1 do. If I can't sell them, I rent
them," he says. For now, Yoakum is holding on to Sunrise Boat and RV Storage. |
