Childress Klein—best known for suburban office projects, including the iconic Galleria and Preston Ridge Commons—is getting into a whole new area: self storage.

Childress Klein is pursuing a rezoning near Stone Mountain to turn a former Target into a climate-controlled self-storage facility for stuff and vehicles. (Most of our unneeded "stuff" comes from Target, so this may not work out.) “We see a lot of opportunity in the area. It's a good mix of income and demographics,” says Childress Klein's Chris Poholek, who heads the company's brand new self-storage division. Here, he's with son Jacob on a recent fishing trip to the Florida Keys.

It had already built and sold two of them to Uncle Bob's Self Storage a few years ago. But the new ones under construction—2910 North Decatur Rd and 680 14th St—will be under the company's own retail storage moniker, SpaceMax Self Storage, Chris says. The company is also developing a facility off Camp Creek Parkway and it just got a land disturbance permit for one at the corner of Powers Ferry Road and Windy Ridge Parkway.

The Gwinnett facility—620 storage units with 120 indoor vehicle storage bays, as it's proposed—just got approved by the Gwinnett County Commission. Chris says the vehicle storage allows SpaceMax to pull customers from a larger-than-typical radius and for longer terms.