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A city businessman who wants to put three self storage buildings on the same end of the block where two similar facilities are already in business and a third has been approved says the market demands it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCompetition breeds success,\u201d Joseph Putnam, owner of an auto body garage, said of a 7-acre property near the Bethel border that he wants to develop with three self storage buildings. \u201cBeing in competition will be good for all of us.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Putnam\u2019s property on Great Pasture Road is across the street from Prime Storage, a property he developed as a self storage facility and sold, and Safe and Sound Storage. Between the two self storage yards is a 1.5-acre site that was approved in 2022 for a 59,000-square-foot self storage facility.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It was during the approval process for that $7 million proposal by a mother-and-son team to build a self storage facility between two existing ones that city leaders heard testimony saying Danbury\u2019s self storage market is underserved.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The Danbury market area has \u201c300,000-square-feet of unmet self storage demand,\u201d said Ethan Draper, a Bethel business school graduate. The shortage is due to \u201cthe exponential growth of apartments and condominiums, which as we all know lack storage space.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The veteran attorney for the young businessman agreed.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere is a rash of self storage projects and applications \u2014 some of them under construction \u2014 in the general area, going from New Milford and Brookfield down into Ridgefield,\u201d attorney Neil Marcus said during a public hearing in 2022. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how this market is underserved.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Also in 2022, a Georgia-based developer of indoor self storage buildings that is expanding in the Northeast began work to transform a vacant 3-acre site on Mill Plain Road into its first Connecticut location.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The application by Putnam to develop his Great Pasture Road property, which was scheduled for a public hearing last Wednesday before the city\u2019s wetlands commission, is the first step in an approval process that requires a zoning permit, special exception approval by the city\u2019s Planning Commission and site plan approval from Danbury\u2019s professional planning staff.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The property in question is in an industrial zone bordered by FuelCell Energy to the west, a roofing supply store and a sign shop to the north, a commercial building to the south, and the self storage yards to the east.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Blueprints call for demolishing a frame home on the property and constructing three buildings \u2013 a four-story structure and two smaller boomerang-shaped buildings. <\/span><\/span><\/span>Construction will have to tip-toe around the environmentally sensitive Sypaug Brook.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe septic system will not have a negative effect on the wetland or the brook as the brook is more than 160 feet from the septic leeching area,\u201d says the application to Danbury\u2019s Environmental Impact Commission. \u201cEven though work is proposed relatively close to the wetlands with the detention basin there are no direct encroachments into it.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n