The commercial warehousing and storage business has been booming in many cities across the U.S. in the past year. Overall, the U.S. storage and warehouse leasing industry is worth an estimated $26 billion and the demand for storage space alone rises by an average annual growth rate of 7%. One of the biggest factors influencing the cost of leasing a warehouse or even finding commercial warehousing available in some cases is the growing legal marijuana industry.
In most states even where it’s legal to grow marijuana, it must be done so indoors. This has caused difficulty in even finding a warehouse to rent for the Toys 4 Tots program in one case in Colorado.
In another example of how the cannabis industry has affected prices for renting a warehouse, the owner of Mile High Comics, Chuck Rozanski, announced earlier this month he’ll be selling at least one of the commercial warehousing properties he owns, according to the comic news source BleedingCool.com.
Rozanski decided to sell the commercial warehousing space in Colorado he currently uses to store comics and books after he discovered the current listing price had ballooned to almost $1.6 million.
“By pure happenstance, both of our buildings are legally zoned for commercial pot-growing operations,” Rozanski said. “Buildings with that zoning here in Colorado have exploded in value over the past 48 months, more than doubling in market value. While pot growers still cannot legally open bank accounts, they have become the most active buyers of commercial warehouse buildings in Denver, usually showing up with sacks of cash.”
The subsequent move that will be required has also given Rozanski a reason to run a new sale to help reduce the amount of product he has stockpiled up.
Although the marijuana industry has certainly contributed to the recent boom in certain warehouse value, the industry has been healthy even before Colorado legalized marijuana use and cultivation. In fact, warehouses of at least 100,000 square feet built since 1990 have never posted a quarter of negative absorption, and their total occupied space is more than 200 million square feet above prerecession levels.