The SSA Foundation will honor two pioneers from the self storage industry this September in Las Vegas; John Yelland of California’s Pouch Self Storage and Lorin Christean of Seattle’s Urban Self Storage. When John Yelland journeyed from Australia to the U.S. in 1966, it was not to establish self storage, but rather to sell golf equipment. Three years later he found himself in Phoenix, AZ where he opened the first self storage facility in the area: Storage Garage Rentals. John drew the plans for 20 simple plywood structures on his dining room table, because buildings smaller than 2,500 square feet did not require an architect. From 1972 through 1979, John developed 10 more self storage facilities and five multi-tenant projects consisting of 800,000 square. The company, which has been re-branded “Pouch Self Storage” now serves more than 6,000 customers. Chistean developed his first self storage facility in 1973 next to Interstate 5, about the time when current Washington State-based SSA Hall of Fame inductees Donald Daniels and Charles Barbo started what would become Shurgard. Christean went on to develop 19 facilities from the ground up and later began converting existing properties into self storage. He also was one of the first to automate the operations of self storage facilities. You can read more about Yelland and Christean in the upcoming September issue of the SSA Globe magazine. The two will be honored on September 6th during the SSA Fall Conference & Trade Show in Las Vegas.
