eKourier April 2016

PROPERTY Spotlight On Mittagong

T he company secured the old French cars and had up to 100 citroen’s laying around at times. The Chessington Cottage situated on the property has significance as a Victorian stone residence built by George Stringer (1841 – 1923), a Wagoner, Miner and Farmer from Warwick, England. Stringer bought the land in 1876 after arriving in Mittagong in 1873. Stringer died in 1923 and is buried in Welby Cemetery. The cottage was to be heritage listed by Council but with consultation with Kennards Self Storage the cottage was allowed to be incorporated with the new Kennards office. The cottage is now used as a conference room, kitchen and has toilet facilities for our customers. This has been well received by our customers. One client we had said he had stayed at the cottage a couple of times as one of his mates had lived in it at some stage. Construction commenced in August 2014 and completed mid-June 2015. Such was the excitement in the area Mittagong property in 2012 by Nev Kennard. Nev rented the property to a friend who stored

of us opening we actually rented our two largest Enterprise Spaces first and allowed the clients access before we had fully completed construction of the centre (their units were completed). Our very first customer, Little Fairy Doors will be on the Shark Tank show in April. They have expanded their simple and novel idea into America. Check out their website - http://www.littlefairydoor.com/. The most interesting customer we currently have is Ian Baker of Advance- Aero. He restores old planes and also races them around the world which, in the Formula 1 class he holds the world speed record. The other interesting thing with Ian is that he used to service Nev Kennards helicopter at Bankstown Airport. Being situated on the Old Hume Hwy the centre is in an ideal spot. Any traffic from Bowral and Mittagong that travel south to Goulburn or Canberra need to go past our centre. We are just down the road from a BigW which is the only major retail chain in the Southern Highlands and is a draw card for the area.

with the Commonwealth Bank before he retired. He found retirement too quiet and the three days a week here at Kennards was perfect to keep him active. He is well liked by our customers. I started in the storage industry in 2003 at the Campbelltown1 centre. I worked there until 2011, then left and returned three years later. The Centre has continued to grow above expectations and due to this the company has gone back to Council with changes to the existing plan to add a further 150 units above the original plan of 450 units. We are currently at just over 91%. The challenge is to be able to grow the yield as our competitors are privately owned and some have not moved on their prices for nearly two years and others only by a few dollars. The advantage we have is our centre has the convenience of an office on site and customers can walk in off the street to make enquiries and buy packing supplies in our Box Shop. We also have 24 hours, 7 days a week access. Mark Mallinson Centre Manager for Mittagong

Col Fuller and I are the Team here at Mittagong. Col is a local who worked

16 Kennards Kourier April 2016