Self-storage is gobbling up Providence; City Council should be praised for saying no more

A wise philosopher, who coincidentally happens to be my mother, once told me a truth that resonates on the subject of today’s column.

“You spend the first half of your life accumulating things,” she said, “and the second half trying to get rid of them.”

The Providence City Council may well have been thinking about a version of that when it recently made an admirable gesture in this realm.

It voted to ban the construction of any more self-storage facilities.

Council members decreed the 17 now in the city are enough – they've had it; no more.

Their reasoning was twofold.

First, no disrespect to the esteemed designers of storage facilities, but none are in danger of winning architectural awards.

That’s a nice way of saying they’re kind of ugly.

And quite conspicuous.

Many, including the newest storage leviathans, have been sited on or near the Route 95 corridor in a way that doesn’t exactly add to Providence’s beauty.

Yes, commerce is a good thing. But in a city this lovely, we don’t need that form of it.

In the same way that chemical plants make stretches of New Jersey look like the insides of gigantic old-school radios, parts of Providence are turning into soulless landscapes of climate-controlled mega-cubes, with lifeless orange doors staring at us as we drive by.

And the City Council had an even more important motivation for its new ban. Providence’s development space is dwindling at a time that it needs more affordable housing. That was being threatened by Pac-Man-like storage buildings gobbling up scarce real estate.

This is the kind of unsexy legislation not prone to draw applause. But the City Council deserves it.

Unlike Boston or New York, Providence is not a place where big developments are taken for granted. So it gets noticed here when a large building starts taking shape, especially near Interstate 95, where so many folks pass by. More than once in recent years, I’ve been intrigued by the sight of a new edifice there, only to be let down when I find it’s another, gag-me-now storage facility.

I’ve never understood why there are so darn many. Even in the smallest, struggling towns, where few stores can survive, there always seems to be a self-storage facility.

My talented colleague Tom Mooney recently went to a convention of the Northeast Self-Storage Trade Association, and got from its director one of the most bone-chilling quotes I’ve ever read – even more so than the horror movie line, “When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”

The director observed to Mr. Mooney: “At the end of the world, everyone says there will only be Twinkies and cockroaches left. I’ve added self-storage to that. It’s an indestructible industry.”

Goodness.

Obviously, people do need storage for this and that.

But the odd thing is that often, actually, they don’t.

I know a professional organizer who often helps folks downsize. She told me the single worst choice she sees is people putting things in storage.

“It’s a delayed decision,” she said. “They’re eventually going to just get rid of it.”

Self-storage in Providence: 1,400-unit Providence self-storage complex on Branch Ave. gets preliminary approval

Meanwhile, they pay thousands for it to collect dust in some climate-controlled box.

A few years ago, my youngest son moved home from an apartment in Boston. He insisted on putting his typical millennial things – including a beanbag chair and a foosball table – in the East Providence U-Haul self-storage facility. There they sat at $170 a month. A thousand or more unnecessary dollars later – or was it $2,000? – he finally woke up and sold almost all of it.

I once did the same, putting sentimental furniture in storage for a future time my kids would want it. But surprise, it turns out adult children usually don’t want their parents’ out-of-date stuff. A few thousand bucks later, I, too, sold it all.

Yet it’s human nature to accumulate, and the wisdom of my mother’s aphorism often doesn’t take hold until later in life.

So storage facilities continue to spread.

But God bless the Providence council for making sure they will no longer pile up around the city – like the junk inside their orange-doored units.

mpatinki@providencejournal.com

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence self-storage ban right step by City Council, Patinkin says