As storage needs grow, so does Meadowlark

Twenty-five years ago, Laura Logan founded Meadowlark Storage, buying five acres of land and five storage buildings in the Village of Fredonia.

She slowly built out the storage facility, adding buildings that fit the needs expressed by her tenants.

“As I started building, people would say, ‘I want to store my boat,’ so I would build a larger building,” Logan said. “Then I realized they needed wider aisles, so we did that. I slowly built it out. It was a learning process for me.

“I really filled a niche, building these larger units with tall doors, wider aisles and an outlet for power.”

Today, Logan is preparing to expand her Fredonia facility. She owns 8.5 acres across the street from her original facility — part of the village’s tax incremental financing district industrial park — and plans to add about 350 storage units there, bringing the total number of units in Fredonia to 750.

The first phase of the expansion will include four buildings, she said, with the second and subsequent phases expected to add nine more structures.

The first phase will add 10 14-by-50-foot units that will accommodate a Class A recreational vehicle, as well as a 14-by-40-foot unit, something Logan said people often use to store multiple cars or as an extension of their garage.

“Many existing storage facilities were not built to handle today’s larger vehicles or provide the accessibility customers expect,” she said.

The two Fredonia facilities will be operated as one, Logan said.

Fredonia isn’t the only place where Logan is expanding her operations. She noted that her Grafton storage facility, where she has another 22 acres to develop, can accommodate 300 more storage units, 100 outside parking spots and 50 large business units.

Those expansions are expected to be done in the next two to five years, she said.

Since its start, Logan noted, Meadowlark Storage has grown significantly. It now has six locations and a total of 2,300 units, including the first phase of the Fredonia expansion, and has become a family business that she runs with her sons Reed and Jack.

“It’s a nice business,” she said, adding it allowed her to stay home when her children were young and to operate from home throughout the pandemic.

Logan noted that when she started, storage units were relatively small but as people needed larger spaces, often to accommodate vehicles, she adjusted.

“We began adding these larger units in Fredonia 20 years ago and now have come full circle after building larger units in Cedar Grove, Grafton, Belgium, Port Washington and Oostburg to again add larger, in-demand RV units in Fredonia,” she said.

Each location has a number of amenities for tenants, Logan said, including video cameras, gates, locks and a free move-in truck to use, as well as online rentals and accounts and autopay.

“We pride ourselves in maintaining secure, clean facilities with great customer service,” she said. “Customers respect that and are great as well.”

To some, storage facilities are a place for people who have too much stuff. But Logan disagreed, citing a variety of reasons people rent units.

“I always defend my tenants,” she said.

There are people who get divorced or unmarried couples who break up and need a place to keep their things temporarily, she said, people who are downsizing and haven’t decided what to keep and what to get rid of and people who are storing items they inherited until they know what to do with them. There are people with small houses who use the storage units for their hobbies or for recreational vehicles and equipment.

“We help a lot of people during multiple transitions in their lives,” Logan said.

There are businesses that need storage space and salespeople who need a place for the work items they don’t have room for at home, Logan said, including some pharmaceutical representatives who need climate controlled places for their supplies.

There are service clubs that need to store equipment, she said, and people who have small garages and don’t have room for both the snowblower and lawn mower so they switch them out, keeping them at home during the season and the storage unit off season.

And with the Vantage Data Centers construction in nearby Port Washington, there are construction workers who need a place to keep their tools and, sometimes, the boats they use in their off hours.

One of the keys to her business, Logan said, is location.

She’s benefited from the fact that many of her facilities are off busy roads such as I-43 and highways 32 and 57, and they’re close to the Port Washington marina

“We get a lot of boat people,” she said. “And with I-43, we get a lot of camper people.”

Today, she added, many people, particularly young men, store their “cool cars” in the units.

“They’ll throw a couple chairs in there and hang out,” Logan said, and bring in their tools to work on the vehicles.

Storage is a necessary service today, she added, and she’s pleased to offer that help.

“I’ve never owned a boat, RV or camper, but I know exactly what size building they need,” Logan said.