CEO Jason Koonin believes the 2.1 million square feet of space in Bluebird Self Storage's development pipeline is the largest in North America, and a healthy portion of that growth is slated to happen in Quebec.

After a soft launch last month, Bluebird and StoreWest Bluebird Partners’ location at 5715 Metropolitan Blvd. E. in Saint Leonard, Que. has now officially opened. The modern, five-storey class-A self-storage facility was designed by Montreal's Stendel + Reich Architecture and built by Construx.co under the supervision of project managers from Element PM Inc.

“It represents a very new and differentiated product in the market,” Koonin told RENX. 

“I know some competitors are building a few modern buildings as well but, up until now, most of the competitive product has been redeveloped industrial buildings and warehouse space. It's not been purpose-built storage that looks more like office buildings.” 

Metropolitain Boulevard facility’s features

The Metropolitain Boulevard facility provides 788 storage units encompassing more than 80,000 net rentable square feet. Its amenities include:

• a low carbon-emitting heat pump and mechanical system that provides heating and cooling to the entire facility;
• a green roof to provide additional insulation, remove carbon dioxide from the air and produce oxygen through photosynthesis;
• electric vehicle chargers;
• three indoor unloading areas;
• climate-controlled units;
• drive-up units; and
• elevators.

The facility is on the north side of Montreal’s dense urban core and features about 120 metres of frontage on TransCanada Hwy. 40 and the adjacent Metropolitain Boulevard. It has almost 500,000 residents within a five-kilometre radius.

Koonin is optimistic about the Metropolitain Boulevard facility’s leasing prospects due to the 85 per cent-plus occupancy and relatively high rents Bluebird has seen at its older, class-C industrial warehouse-style building at 4590 Henri Bourassa Blvd. W. in Montreal’s Saint Laurent area.

He expects leasing to pick up at Metropolitain Boulevard in late April and May.

Other new Montreal, Quebec City locations

StoreWest Bluebird Partners, along with Meckelborg Financial Group Ltd. and Oktodev, are developing a facility on a 1.75-acre site at 4015 Leman Blvd. in Montreal’s Laval suburb scheduled to open in 2026. The class-A building will provide approximately 1,000 storage units encompassing over 100,000 net rentable square feet.

Approximately 185,000 people live within five kilometres of the site, which offers access to Route 125 running north-south and Autoroute 440 running east-west. New condominium towers are under construction on both sides of the A440 and more are planned. 

Bluebird has an older, smaller drive-up facility at 1100 Chemin Industriel in Saint-Nicolas, across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City, but it’s developing two downtown locations in the provincial capital. 

The ICM Bluebird Canadian Self Storage Fund has partnered with IPSO FACTO Real Estate Investment to develop a class-A self-storage facility at 885 Charest Blvd. W. scheduled for completion in August. It will feature 1,169 storage units encompassing more than 107,000 square feet. Oktodev was instrumental in sourcing the site and is participating in the execution of all the fund’s Quebec City projects.

That includes a new 120,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility at 230 Seigneuriale St. expected to be complete in November. It’s in a high-traffic location close to densely populated neighbourhoods and a retail power centre.

StoreWest Bluebird Partners and its fund

Toronto-headquartered Bluebird Self Storage is active in development, acquisitions and third-party management.

StoreWest Bluebird Partners was founded in 2022 as a joint venture between StoreWest Developments and Bluebird to collaborate on all storage development and acquisition across Canada under the Bluebird brand. StoreWest and Bluebird are also the collective asset manager for the ICM Bluebird Canadian Self-Storage Fund, which Koonin said owns about a dozen properties.

“The fund has has been able to accumulate assets, maybe not as many as we would like, but quite a number given the climate,” he said. “Even though market conditions have been more difficult for raising equity to do acquisitions, we have been more successful in raising money to build new projects.” 

Canadian and American private equity firms and pension funds are becoming more interested in self-storage. While some have come on board with StoreWest Bluebird Partners and its fund, Koonin said many are still just talking about investing and not yet doing it.

“We've been able to broaden our investor base, which is pretty important,” Koonin said. “All these projects are fairly capital-intensive. The land and development costs for one of these full-scale class-A sites is probably $25 million, sometimes closer to $30 million.”

Growth in the rest of Canada

Bluebird’s development pipeline also includes five projects in Calgary, two in Edmonton, and one each in Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

“Calgary has been, and will continue to be, a major market for us,” Koonin observed. “It’s benefitted from tremendous population growth and economic opportunity, and there’s relatively good housing affordability in Calgary and Edmonton.”

StoreWest Bluebird Partners has just acquired its third store in Victoria, B.C. The downtown location on Quadra Street offers approximately 500 lockers in more than 40,000 square feet of net rentable space and is surrounded by multifamily buildings, with more planned.

Victoria has some of the best self-storage rental rates in Canada and city council has enacted bylaw changes that will restrict new self-storage development.

Some self-storage companies and portfolios are for sale, so Koonin expects the fund to be quite active this year. 

“It's simply a matter of how quickly we can raise the capital,” Koonin said. “We launched the fund at the end of 2022, which was right as interest rates started rising. 

“The timing was not good so 2023 was challenging, but 2024 was definitely a bit better. We definitely got more properties closed and raised more money in ’24, so we're hoping that will continue in ’25 as rates have come down a bit in Canada, so the cost of capital has come down.”