Back in the 60's (about the time I was born) my father purchased a large piece of land that used to be the Sacramento Northern railway line. This piece was adjacent to another business he had interest in, so he bought it because of its proximity. Not too many years after, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) approached him to purchase the right of way to complete their line. He turned a VERY tidy profit on that deal, and they did not need all of the property he then owned. Since they didn't want it all, he gladly kept the remainder, not knowing what he could ever use it for, but land is land. He was left with a piece of property roughly 60' wide by about 1/4 mile. People laughed at the unusable piece of property he hadn't been smart enough to get rid of.

In the meantime, mini-storage was born.

In 1987 (I was 23) we built the original 53 units with a manager's residence. Since then we've built out to 400+, 2 stories, with 4 residences on the property.

This little unusable, stupid piece of funky property now is our little goldmine....and the value of the land was originally $29,000. We've since been approached by major players in the industry to buy us out in the 4-5 million dollar range.