16 | SSAA CELEBRATING 30 YEARS
JIM MILLER Jim Miller laid the foundations of today’s self storage industry.
I
t is said by many that without Jim Miller the Self Storage Association would not exist. He was the man who brought it all together. The industry we have today owes a great deal of thanks to Jim’s early insights and initiatives. Many of today’s industry leaders worked with Jim and their success is largely attributable to what they learned from Jim’s leadership and skill as an entrepreneur.
THE BEGINNING In July 1975 Jim Miller went to the USA with the goal of finding a cash flow real estate play not yet in Australia. He had a contact, Lewis Tyra from Houston, so he headed there and this is where Jim saw an early drive-up style self storage development and thought it would work in Australia. It took 2 years to build sufficient capital to partner his first self storage project a 3-story conversion of an existing warehouse in Pyrmont, Sydney. Jim’s early research for the demand of storage came by accident. In 1976 he had approval for a facility in St Leonards, Sydney and booked a Yellow Pages advertisement. He was ‘gazumped’ on the purchase of the site but it was too late to cancel the ad and he spent 12 months handling a landslide of enquiries for space he did not have. He purchased another building in Pyrmont, Sydney and it filled in six months and was sold to an investment company at a 15% yield. Jim then developed a still existing, multi-level warehouse property in Jones Street, Ultimo, and a drive- up facility on the Princes Highway in Tempe - which is now one of the largest IKEA stores in Sydney. These sites showed that multi-level facilities and drive up facilities had equal market acceptance. This developed the concept of multi-level storage for the whole industry. In 1986 Millers Storage opened their 8th facility in Wentworthville. Jim ran a television campaign and the results brought a wave of new enquiries. Television
Jim pursued his goal of establishing self storage facilities as institutional grade assets and gaining the banks acceptance of self storage as providing good lending security. INSIDER 114 AUGUST / SEPTEMBER 2020
advertising was a regular part of the marketing campaign until the Millers properties were sold in 1998. It was during this time, that the first organised storage industry meetings were held in Jim’s office in 1989. Jim and other early industry participants had the forethought and wisdom to take a proactive approach to managing the industry and the Self Storage Association was officially formed the following year. They successfully managed government regulators, trade unions and the public. Early achievements included avoiding Government actions to impose stamp duty charges on storage agreements, countering Union pressure to impose overtime rates for storage managers where flexible hours were worked and establishing the SSAA’s standard storage agreement. Jim pursued the goal of establishing self storage facilities as institutional grade assets and gaining the banks acceptance of self storage as providing good lending security. Meanwhile Millers Self Storage expanded into Melbourne, Gold Coast and Brisbane and Millers also took on management of facilities owned by others. Jim maintained an entrepreneurial spirit and after visiting the US several more times he developed the concept of combining self storage with document storage and wine storage. By 1998 he was handling 1.5 million archive boxes and storing over 10,000 cases of wine. After working with Macquarie Investment Trust, a venture capital financier, Jim looked to other forms of financing. Merrill Lynch embarked on preparation of a prospectus for a public offering. However, the process lead to Security Capital European Realty ultimately buying the business and associated property interests. The company was managed by R.A.D. Morton III for a short time before Jim’s son, Angus Miller took on the role of CEO for five years before the portfolio was again sold to a Joint venture between Kennards and Valad Property Trust in 2004. Jim pursued his goal of establishing self storage facilities as institutional grade assets and gaining the banks acceptance of self storage as providing good lending security. Nowadays, Jim has a first-class cattle and sheep property on the Murrumbidgee River at Jugiong, run by his son Bob. His business journey is complete and he is back in the country where he came from and, as he says, where he belongs. l
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