A new 105,000 square foot, 3 story Life Storage storage facility was approved for Fries Mill Road in Washington Township. It will be located next to the existing Verchio’s Produce.
The new storage facility when developed will face the Echo Shopping Plaza across the street, where Giant Fitness is located.
The property for the Storage Facility is the same one which was previously proposed to become home to a Royal Farms, which was not approved/developed.
This new Life Storage facility approval was granted April 19th, 2022 at the Planning Board meeting.
42Freeway was not able to attend the Planning Board meeting but has since seen the site plan. We present our own generalized depictions in this article.
Plans for a storage facility at this lot have been approved before. We found ordinances referencing an approval back in 2007, given to a prior owner.
This new effort to develop a storage facility on Fries Mill Road is being developed by Safstor, but will operate as a Life Storage brand property.
WCRE Commercial Real Estate was listing the property and maintains a marketing page for it. The marketing has been updated to say “Under Agreement”
As part of this project there will be some adjustments to property lines, and the Verchio’s Produce property will grow by an additional 1.2 acres.
We are not aware of development timelines at this point.
Life Storage Washington Township
A bit of a catch-up for 42Freeway on this one, as we missed posting about this ahead of the Planning Board meeting, and then couldn’t attend.
We did stop into the Washington Township Municipal Offices and reviewed the plans, so what you see here depicted here is from memory.
The new storage facility will be located on Fries Mill, close to the Hurffville-Cross Keys intersection.
Verchio’s Produce & Deli sits on the corner of the intersection, and behind them is a very large 40 acres of undeveloped land.
That being said, the LifeStorage building will be developed on a much smaller portion of that open property.
Of the approximately 40 acres of land, only a 3.5 acre section directly next to Verchio’s is in play for this project. This is less than 10% of the larger undeveloped lots.
We say “lot(s)” plural because the core tax lot for this newly proposed storage facility was already defined as a smaller 4.89 acre piece of property, which wrapped around the back of Verchio’s reaching both Fries Mill Road and Hurfville-Cross Keys!
Verchio’s Gains Some Additional Land
Even though the property in question has access to both Fries Mill and Hurffville-Cross Keys Roads, the storage facility developer has decided they only need the Fries Mill frontage. The storage facility will “sit” on Fries Mill Road (facing the Echo Plaza).
As part of the development plans, Verchio’s will have two smaller parcels adjacent to their own lot added into their property.
The most significant one being they pick up an additional 270 feet of frontage on Hurffville-Cross Keys Road. This one added parcel equates to an additional .90 acres. The second parcel is triangular and is on the South back of Verchio’s.
There are overhead power lines at the back of the property.
At this time we don’t know if Verchio’s has any plans for the additional land.
Life Storage Inc.
Life Storage Inc is a large real estate investment trust which acquires and manages self-storage properties throughout the USA.
They operate over 1,100 self-storage facilities and employ over 2,000 people.
They are one of the largest self-storage companies in the World, and they are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange as stock symbol LSI
In the 42Freeway area the operate facilities in Blackwood, West Deptford, Delran and Delanco
Links and Location
Life Storage Inc
268 Hurffville-Cross Keys Road
Washington Township, New Jersey 08080
Life Storage Website