700 Block Storage
Five-story self-storage over a two-story podium · Salt Lake City, UT
700 Block Storage is a five-story, 510-unit climate-controlled self-storage building on the corner of 600 West and 700 South in Salt Lake City. The top three floors sit on a two-story podium, on a lot of only 0.81 acres. Barr & Best Development developed it, Barr, Co built it, and in 2023 the Associated General Contractors of Utah named it Small Contractor Division Project of the Year for new building construction.
It's also just down 600 West from our office, so we drive past it a lot. It's one of the projects we're proudest of.
Project Stats
Status | Completed - October 2022
Location | 681 S 600 W, Salt Lake City, UT
Building Size | 83,691 SF
Site Size | 0.81 acres
Number of Units | 510
Stories | 5 (two-story podium)
Building Height | 55 ft
Parking | 13 stalls
Drive-Up Units | 19
Award | AGC of Utah 2023 Award of Excellence - Small Contractor Division Project of the Year, New Building Construction
Design Schedule | Jan 2020 - Oct 2020
Permitting | Oct 2020 - May 2021
Construction Schedule | Jun 2021 - Oct 2022
About the Design
Six, Four or Five Stories
The developer's first sketch was a tall podium building with room for trucks to drive through. We explored a number of options from there, including a six-level building of about 95,600 SF and a four-story building of about 63,000 SF. The owner's market study then set a target, and in the end we and the developer settled on five stories at 55 feet.
Why Five Stories Paid Off
Salt Lake City requires design review for a building in this zone taller than 60 feet. That would have meant a longer entitlement process and a real chance the city would not approve self-storage on the site at all. Staying at 55 feet kept it a straight building permit. The building code also limits how many floors of lighter construction can sit on the podium, so a sixth floor would have cost more per square foot than the five below it. Five floors and a careful site layout got close to what the market study called for.
Parking Made the Project
This is the part that decided whether 700 Block got built. City code would have required 42 parking stalls. On a lot this size, 42 stalls would have left almost no room for a building, and every time you shrink the building to fit the parking you only free up a little more room. You keep going around that loop until the project is too small to pay for itself. From our self-storage work in other cities, we knew storage customers don't need anywhere near that much parking, so we suggested the developer commission a parking study. Hales Engineering did the study, the city accepted 2.2 stalls per 100 units, and the site needed 13 stalls instead of 42.
Starting With the City
Jarod Hall went to Salt Lake City's Development Review Team meeting in January 2020, before the design was set. The zoning (General Commercial) was a good fit for self-storage, so the meeting was mostly about fire access, utilities, parking and combining the three lots into one.
A Two-Story Podium
The bottom two floors have a steel frame and masonry walls around the outside. A concrete deck over the second floor gives the three-hour fire separation, and the top three floors are metal studs around masonry stair and elevator cores. Inside on the ground floor you can see the concrete deck overhead.
Five Stories Means a Generator
Once a building reaches five levels, the building code requires backup power for the elevators. 700 Block has two elevators and a backup generator to run them.
A Cost-Effective Facade
We tried to balance an interesting design with a facade that didn't cost much. The base is split-face concrete block. Above it, insulated metal panels in several grays run in long stripes, and the glass corner towers on the street show the blue unit doors on every floor. (The owners picked the simpler of two exterior schemes we showed them.) Along the street sides there are faux unit doors, which keep the look of drive-up storage where the real drive-up units were taken out.
Loading and Drive-Up
At the back, a covered loading bay runs under the building between the drive-up units, so customers unload out of the weather. There are 19 drive-up units on the ground floor, and the rest of the 510 units are climate-controlled and reached by elevator.
Barr & Best Development brought us a tight corner lot and an idea for a tall storage building. Hales Engineering's parking study is what made the numbers work, and McNeil Engineering combined the three lots and handled the civil work. Barr, Co built it during COVID, when steel was hard to get, and did a great job keeping it moving.
Thanks to everyone who worked on 700 Block. Their names and links are below.
A Collaborative Effort
Design Team
Structural | HW Engineering
MEP | Royal Engineering
Civil | McNeil Engineering
Landscape | Landform Design Group
Geotechnical | GSH Geotechnical
Parking Study | Hales Engineering
Construction Team
General Contractor | Barr, Co
Stakeholders
Developer | Barr & Best Development
Operator | 700 Block Storage
Architecture Project Management
Architecture Team
Principal in Charge & Architect of Record | Jarod Hall
Project Manager | Ethan Barley
Project Support | Jeremy Larsen
Project Scope
Site Studies & Options | We tested the site at six, four and five stories, checked each against the zoning height limit and the parking code, and set the layout that made the project pencil.
Approvals | We met with Salt Lake City's Development Review Team, recommended the parking study that cut the requirement from 42 stalls to 13, and took the building through the city's permit review.
Building Design (SD, DD, CD) | Full building design services, from the first schematic layout through design development and a complete set of construction documents.
Construction Administration (CA) | We stayed with the project through construction, answered RFIs and reviewed submittals with Barr, Co, and walked the site through closeout.
Looking Ahead
Kamron Barr has hired di'velept again since 700 Block. He tells us what he values is getting several real options for a site, each one he can weigh against what it will earn, and he likes working with our team.
On 700 Block the answer wasn't a taller building. It was 29 fewer parking stalls. If you have a small site that doesn't seem to pencil, we'd like to help you test the options and find the one that does. There's more of our self-storage work on the pages that follow.