Extra Space Mini Storage Maitland
Our Story...
In 1989 we purchased the block of land in James st Horseshoe Bend Maitland. At the time john wanted to get out of bricklaying due to a bad and sore back.
My partner Tracey had come up from Sydney and decided to start a craft shop at Morpeth.
We were given a box of dried gourds, and told that they were really unique and easy to grow. As the gourds , (members of the pumpkin family ) became more popular we needed somewhere bigger than our backyard to grow them. Thats when we purchased the block of land that we used to refer to as The Gourd Garden. Originally It had a shed with 4 Horse stables situated in the middle of the paddock , with a trotting track around it.
We covered the gourd garden with trellises to increase the growing area , as the gourd vines love to climb., they looked really interesting with all the many different shapes and sizes hanging down.
We became the largest commercial growers of gourds in Australia ,supplying retail shops, Australia wide . WE even exported gourds to New Zealand. At that stage we even had contract growers growing gourds for us, plus 10 to 15 acres at Millers Forrest.
After 15 years of growing gourds and the decline in the country theme and gourd craft industry we decided to call it a day .
We also wanted to start a family without having to travel to craft , and agricultural shows to sell the gourds.
In 2004 our real estate agent mentioned that it was really hard to find a local self storage unit for his daughter . So we decided to invest in some self storage units due to the lack of self storage in central Maitland and with my bad bricklaying back this could be something which could supplement our income.
After years of planning and $50,000 we eventually met all of Maitland council's recommendations. The first hurdle was building a commercial business with in 40 mtrs of residential houses.. That’s why we are so far off the front road way. Our next challenge was to get a heritage architect to design our building to blend in with the existing buildings in the street. This ment having a gable roof to match the other roofs in the street scape. We would be one of the only self storage facilities to have a steep pitch roof, most self storage facilities have a 5 to 10 degree pitch roof and range from there units only being 2.4 to 2.7 meters high.
Anyway our gable roof design gives our storage units a much higher roof ranging from 3 to 5.5 meters This means more room to stack your goods and have a cooler unit. Unfortunately trying to stack your belongs that high would be quite impossible , however with some clever thinking by john he has incorporated a 3×3 metres mezzanine floor in his highest units . This is accesable by an attic ladder . This area is perfect for stacking those hard to stack , awkward or fragile items.
The best part is that these units are only a fraction of the cost for heaps more space . Also our driveways are removalist and customer friendly with the widest driveways in The Maitland area ranging up to 7.2 mtrs in width, and you can drive straight up to your door. Hence this is where our name Extra Space Mini Storage came from. Our units are totally unique to the self storage industry and have not be done anywhere else in the Australian Self Storage industry.