Meet Your Local Self Storage Facility: A-1 Self Storage in Belmont, CA
It’s great having the opportunity to let our facilities individually shine with all of their unique amenities and features. Our A-1 Self Storage facility in Belmont, California was built in September of 2007, and with 95% occupancy, it’s fair to say that it is a popular facility in the area. We’re going to dig into what makes it so great with self storage professional John Powers!
John has been with A-1 Self Storage for 12 years. He said that his facility has 822 units, 35 of which are climate controlled, and 16 that are drive-up units. John told us about what exactly it means for a unit to qualify as a “drive-up” unit, and for what purpose people often rent those kinds of units.
“Those are outside units that people can drive right up to instead of going down a hallway, or upstairs. We have some customers that use them to store vehicles. We have a company that's a baklava place right up the way here, Kabul Afghan Cuisine.
“They keep their packing materials here, not food or anything, but the bags, boxes, and non perishables so they are close at hand if they need more. Then you have some customers that store things on pallets, or things that can't fit through a door, so they use drive up units a lot too.”
You can access the units, drive-up or otherwise, between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. John said that they will make exceptions in special cases, and give customers a temporary 24 hour access code, but not permanently.
The facility has four floors total, and two large elevators for freight and passengers. “It's not like some of the other storage places where it just holds your belongings and that's it; you go up with your stuff.”
With so many floors to handle, you might be wondering: How do they keep this place secure and safe for everyone? It’s not hard according to John, who said they have cameras running throughout the property and each individual unit has its own alarm system.
“When you rent a unit you get a code that works specifically for your unit. You enter the code to enter the building, which also deactivates the alarm to your personal unit. We require you have a cylinder lock that actually goes inside the handle. It's the safest lock in storage, as opposed to some of our competitors that will allow padlocks, and things like that.”
John is proud to say that their facility has never had any break ins, and we believe it. The area around the facility is home to middle and upper class homes. There are many corporate offices in the area as well that add to the upscale nature of the area. “Since this is the peninsula, and we are so close to Silicon Valley, there's companies like Oracle and PlayStation and all types of big companies,” John said. “Not too far from here you have Palo Alto and Facebook, Google things like that. So you get a lot of people moving here because their job is here.”
When it comes to choosing a place to store in Belmont, and comparing the competition to A-1 Self Storage, John says that it’s like people are really comparing a Honda to a Mercedes.
“The main things for us are the safety, security, and cleanliness,” John said. “We have never had break ins, and no fires, no floods. Sometimes people are concerned that we don't have a gate but we have all the individual door alarms.
“So, with some of our competitors, once you get in the gate, there is no more security after that point. There's nothing to let the customers know that their door has been opened and someone is breaking in. A lot of the people here come because of our reputation and reviews. Our reviews and customer service set us apart from our competitors.”
You don’t have to tell us twice, John! The Belmont facility really is a shining gem in our treasure chest of facilities. We hope that anyone interested in self storage takes a moment to say “Hi” to John, and see all this facility has to offer.
