eKourier Jan 2018

PROPERTY

Spotlight on Castle Hill

Above: Temporary office. Right: Centre Manager Mick Baron (front) and Medhat George Assistant Manager

K ennards Self Storage Castle Hill is located in the Victoria Road Industrial Precinct at 5 Packard Avenue. For those of you who remember the famous (or Infamous) Tony Packard Holden (Just up the Windsor Road from Baulkham Hills and Let me do it right for you) we are located beside the original dealer- ship and are highly visible from Windsor Road. The site was originally a Millers site built in 1990 and taken over by KSS in 2004. We still have the original Dog Kennel for the Guard Dogs that Millers used to use overnight on the site, as well as a few of their customers from that time, with the longest here since 1991. We did have three buildings with just over 950 units, but due to current construction, for now we have two buildings with 775 units. Once construc- tion of the new five storey building is complete we expect to have around 1,300 units in total. This will put us in a great position to handle the explosion in apartments in the Castle Hill area due to the opening of the North West Rail Line in early 2019.

around $12,000 a month on merchandise and around 100 enquiries. The current Team here at Castle Hill consists of Assistant Manager, Medhat George (four years with Kennards), our Part Time Assistant Manager, Jim Gavin (coming up for two years now) and myself. I took over as Centre Manager early in 2017 and have been with Kennards for the last nine years. We are proud to have been a Training Hub both under Steve Jansen and Neil Pardoe. We have also been involved with the ANC Courier start up under Neil Pardoe as well as the Rent Now Pilot. We expect this year to be challenging with our temporary office and construction taking place. Access will be tight and will need to be managed well with our Builders Total Construction. The upside to all this will be a brand new building and office and the exciting challenge to then rent it out. Mick Baron Kennards Self Storage Castle Hill

We have a number of National Accounts as well as a large number of businesses, which means we get a steady stream of deliveries most days making manage- ment of the Parcel Pick Up a priority. We enjoy healthy competition with three other storage facilities within five kms of us. We are the largest centre in the area offering 24 hour access, Enterprise Spaces, Driveway Units and Outdoor Spaces. We can also accept 40 foot Containers on site. We have a few quirky customers that love to have a chat and that have been here for years. We also have a few famous customers that we approached to have their photos taken for the Kourier, both politely declined. Let’s just say that one is a famous female singer and coach on a popular reality show and the other is a retired Wiggle! Currently we sit at just over 90% occupancy and have already taken a few reservations for when the new building is completed later this year. The Centre has been above 85% for the last few years and on average makes

17 Kennards Kourier January 2018