Self-Storage Developer Plans New Hollywood Film Vault

Hollywood has two sides — the movie industry and everything else.

Baranof Holdings, a Dallas-based self-storage developer, plans to serve both markets with a self-storage facility that can hold film and other media — typically video and audio tapes, photographs and hard drives — as well as household goods.

This month the company filed plans to build a seven-story, 168,000-square-foot facility at North Seward Street and North Hudson Avenue, a couple blocks south of Santa Monica Boulevard in central Hollywood.

Baranof would actually demolish an existing storage facility used for film storage and replace it with the new facility designed as both a film vault and a general-use repository, according to a project application.

Until recently, largely because of pandemic-driven office and moving trends, the self-storage industry was in the middle of an extended boom, with developers around the country racing to build more units and rents ticking up at existing facilities. The largest player in the sector, Public Storage, is based in Glendale, with a market cap of nearly $49 billion.

But this year the asset class has fallen back to Earth, the Wall Street Journal reported recently, with fewer new customers signing on and rents falling. In the first quarter of 2023, rent for new customers fell 10 percent year-over-year to $15.45 per square feet, according to Green Street, amounting to the steepest drop the sector has seen in at least a decade.

The owner of the Hollywood property is a company called Pure Silver Enterprises, which bought the site in 2013 in a multiple parcel deal for nearly $4 million, according to property records.

Last year, when the sector still looked white hot, a number of self-storage developers filed plans around L.A., including in Woodland Hills, Glendale, Mar Vista and near Downtown L.A.

The Dallas-based Baranof is both developing and operating facilities around the country, with additional properties in Venice and Santa Monica.