More and more people are choosing to live in urban areas as opposed to moving to the suburbs. The only issue is space. I think all of us who live in Jersey City in an apartment can attest to this “Where the heck do we put all our accumulated  s*&t?”

Ever since we had a kid it seems like all we do is accumulate stuff, in hindsight we should get rid of it but then it begs the question, “What if we have another child?” or maybe that gold hand-me-down china set will come in handy? Maybe I will be a size 0 again and harem pants will go back in style? So what do we do with all our stuff? Delta Storage to the rescue!

Delta Storage is a self-storage business that opened just two months ago. Conveniently located on Grand Street on the border of Downtown and Bergen-Lafayette. They have a full drive-in facility with top of the line amenities and security and they even have a truck you can borrow for a few hours to pick up your stuff if you don’t have transportation! How easy is that?

I was invited to tour this state of the art storage space with friend and photog, Nabil, and met with owner Vincent DiDomenico. Vincent was was born and bred in Hudson County and grandson of 1950’s Bayonne Mayor Thomas DiDomenico! He’s awesome.

The facility was so impressive, Nabil and I joked that it would be so cool to throw a party here after hours. We had a blast getting to know Vincent and learning more about Delta Storage.

Alright people, enough with the hoarding and clutter, gather your stuff and follow me to Delta Storage. Your first month is free FYI.

What’s your name? Vincent DiDomenico.

What do you do? I am the owner of Delta Storage. We are in the self-storage business in Northern New Jersey and we’re also in Brooklyn.

Did you guys just open? This facility is two months old.

It’s beautiful. So tell me about your services. We have a different kind of concept with self-storage which is it’s all about convenience. We’ve designed a facility that’s all about the tenant and the ease of use of using self-storage. We have a full drive-in facility where there’s no loading outside, you drive right into the building and you load through this main driveway. We then have elevators that bring you up to the different floors and there’s a lot of security embedded in how we operate that as well. Convenience is our number one thing to help our tenants.

Are there different sizes of storage spaces? We have many different sizes ranging from 20 square feet up to over 300 square feet. We can accommodate people who need a little extra space for their apartments all the way up to business/commercial type uses where they need to run their businesses out of the facility.

What are your prices like? It’s all month to month so you just use it as you need it, there’s no long-term commitment. Currently, we’re running a one-month free promotion for our soft grand opening and we’re very competitive with rates.

Can you say anything about people using the storage space? I grew up in Hudson County. We first arrived in Bayonne in the 1850s, so we have a long history in Hudson County, I went to Saint Peter’s Prep and I’m on the board of trustees. We’re very familiar with our demographic here in Hudson County and how people in an urban environment use self-storage and we’ve geared the whole concept towards that. People use it for different reasons that you don’t ordinarily have in the suburbs where you have a garage or a basement.

What are your hours? We’re open seven days a week and from time to time if someone needs additional hours beyond our hours of operation they will get access codes. We have over eleven hundred self-storage units, every single one of those is alarmed with a wireless device that timestamps everything that happens inside the facility. Security is really paramount to what we do to give people piece of mind that their goods are going to be well taken care of.

It’s really nice in here. We’ve always tried to keep ahead of the trends. We think that having an office and amenities like we have are definitely the future of the industry  and not dealing in a converted building but something that is more upscale.

What are the amenities? The door alarms, the elevators; everything that we’ve done here is all about the quality of experience and convenience for the tenant. We also have a brand new truck for people who don’t have the ability to move their goods in their own vehicle. It’s a free rental, we give you four hours so you can move in. It’s all those little things that we do and we do right that we feel is just a step above our competitors.

There are the wireless devices, so when you open that door we know that Lynn came in, what time you keyed in and what time you keyed out and that’s alarmed while you’re not here. At night, it goes to central station monitoring so the police will show up if there’s any event.

What’s the weirdest thing that somebody’s ever stored? It’s pretty mundane, we’re almost like a utility. One time we had a tenant and we noticed there were drums in the unit. We contacted the tenant and said, “You can’t have drums in the unit.” Lo and behold it was Jennifer Lopez and it was an MTV set that she owned and the drums were part of an urban setting. We said we can’t have the drums in there even if it’s J.LO if you have drums, people will say it’s acceptable.

Why are you not allowed to have drums? For the safety and the security of our tenants because we don’t know what could be in a drum so we just shy away from it.

So you said you grew up in Bayonne where do you live now? I live in Somerset County now, but I’m in Hudson County five days a week.

Do you have a favorite Jersey City hang out spot? I usually frequent the Light House Tavern and Park and Sixth. Sometimes my wife and I will bring the kids east to show them the area where dad grew up in.

So your grandfather was the mayor of Bayonne? In the 1950s.

What was his name? Thomas DiDomenico. When I grew up we had a large travel business that was based in Hudson County and also we owned a fleet of motor coaches. So I have a facility in Bayonne that I converted from that use into a large self-storage facility as well.

How long have you been in the storage industry? About seventeen years.

What do you like about it? After the travel business, I got my MBA and I was going to go into investment banking and I decided to go the entrepreneurial route. I just went forward and never looked back.

That’s awesome! Can you help me with these boxes?

550 Grand Street, Jersey City, New Jersey 07302
Phone: 201-200-1225

http://www.deltaselfstorage.com/locations/jersey-city/