Tim Harty, The Business Times

On the heels of Guardian Storage opening a large self-storage facility with mostly climate-controlled units earlier this year, Grand Junction is set to get a larger one next year.

A large pad of concrete has been poured and framing has begun on what will be a three-story, 106,410-square-foot self-storage facility at 2771 Crossroads Blvd. It sits on 2.35 acres between the Rocky Mountain Health Plans building and the La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham.

The property was purchased by AIE Grand Junction LLC, a subsidiary of AIE Partners, on July 29 for $725,000, according to the Mesa County Assessor’s website.

AIE Partners, working out of Texas and Louisiana, says on its website, aiepartners.com, “AIE is a boutique commercial real estate firm specializing in self-storage, industrial, and mixed-use assets.” It adds AIE Partners has “underwritten, developed and acquired more than two million square feet of storage projects nationwide.”

The Grand Junction project is named Crossroads Self Storage, and a Mesa County building permit approved on July 17 lists the project valuation at $6,274,997.70. ARCO/Murray National is the general contractor listed for the project. Also listed on the permit are GMA Architects, Tiger Electric and Amico Plumbing and Mechanical.

Ross Claiborne, one of the partners in AIE Partners, said they are building “a Class A, climate-controlled, self-storage facility. All of our units will be climate controlled. We will be using a national operator named Go Store It, who usually hires regional and local managers to kind of manage assets in the area.”

Claiborne said AIE Partners is hoping to have the facility open by late summer 2027, and he complimented the City of Grand Junction for how smooth the process has been thus far.

“The city has been excellent to work with,” he said. “I’ve dealt with a lot of municipalities where they can be, we’ll say, antagonistic and whatnot. Your city has been very good to work with as a whole.”

Claiborne said AIE Partners liked what it saw in the Grand Junction market and the property it purchased.

“We were very encouraged by a lot of growth in Grand Junction, and this parcel has a very unique size to it,” he said, adding the property made sense for self storage, given the parking counts at the surrounding businesses on Crossroads Boulevard.

Claiborne said AIE took note of Guardian Storage’s entrance into the Grand Junction market.

“They were on our radar,” he said. “From what we understand, they’re a very well-run and well-built facility. We think that there is ample opportunity for another self-storage operator to be in this market, which is kind of our primary cause for going into it.”

Another good reason to build in Grand Junction was meeting a need for climate-controlled self storage, as Claiborne said, “I believe that the market was underserved by climate control units as a whole, which kind of was our thesis for developing there.”

And for one more selling point, he added, “Generally, looking at the market – my business partners and I, we’ve all gone up to Colorado many times over the years – Grand Junction’s a very nice Colorado town. You all have good income demographics, educated population, and those are all factors that we take into consideration.”