York Town Square

Theresa Maciejewski’s Capital Self Storage is building storage units in the former Coca-Cola Bottling Company building in Springettsbury Township. Background posts: Plaid facade linked to Springetts cleaner’s roots and Bottle-shaped autos rolled around York County.
The landmark Coca-Cola building along East Market Street (Route 462) in Springettsbury Township will get some new fizz this summer.
Capital Self Storage is renovating the familiar structure with its art deco logo on its side and is installing storage units.
Uses of buildings suggest changes in how industries operate and people live today…

In 2006, Coca-Cola closed the aging building and consolidated its work elsewhere.
The regionalization of businesses is one story.
But those self-storage units.
What do they say about life today?
We’re buying larger and larger houses, but we still don’t have enough space.
Americans are more mobile, needing temporary digs for their stuff
And because of divorce and other factors, Americans are breaking up and consolidating and re-consolidating households.
We just have more stuff, and that creates a market that smart business owners are grabbing.
And the re-use of a building like this Coke landmark keeps it up and hides the storage units. York County has enough of those unsightly self-storage units – although Capital Self Storage does a nice job with its complexes – that are dotting its countryside.
A York Daily Record/Sunday News story (1/7/08) tells about the new use of the old building:

It is an old building that the Coca-Cola Bottling Company had no real use for after more than 60 years of operation.
And come summer, it’ll be a building converted to store the stuff that many people have no room for but choose not to sell or throw away.
The former Coca-Cola Bottling Company location in Springettsbury Township is to become more than 500 units of self-storage by summer, the building’s new owners said Thursday.
Capital Self Storage purchased the property for about $2 million and plans to rehabilitate the structure and put the storage units inside the existing building.
No units are planned for outside, which is what people might think of when they hear about traditional self-storage setups, said Theresa Maciejewski, director of operations for Capital Self Storage.
“We do have plans to change the look of the plant,” Maciejewski said. “Really change the corner.”

Limits and potential
The company hopes to begin renting storage to customers in June.
Maciejewski said Capital purchased the building because of the many businesses with limited space, as well as apartment buildings, east of York.
Coca-Cola closed its operation inside the building at 2611 E. Market St., Springettsbury Township, in late 2006 as a way to streamline its operation in central Pennsylvania.
The location was limited in growth potential and was aging, the company said. Operations in Harrisburg, Lancaster and northern Maryland were expected to absorb the workload.
Finding the right fit
Capital Self Storage has a history of taking unused buildings and turning them into storage facilities.
It began in the Dover area in the early 1980s, when founder Ken Snyder Jr. and his wife, Deb, moved to a family farm. There they converted a farm on the property into storage.
That launched the company, which today includes locations throughout southcentral Pennsylvania.
Rock Commercial Realty represented the buyer, Capital Self Storage, and seller, Coca-Cola, in the transaction.
President David Keech said the self-storage company is a good fit for the building. Rock put the building on the market last year, and within a month, at least 10 people expressed an interest in buying it.
But some issues with zoning rules and access difficulties for large vehicles -East Market Street has a concrete barrier between eastbound and westbound lanes – made it difficult to close a deal at first, Keech said.
Capital Self Storage put its hat in the ring about six months into the process, and Keech said their commercial operation is a good fit for the location.