Land is usually a very long play (trust funds, REITs, endowments, etc), I'd say this is a relatively new strategy in the past 10-20 years in most places. They likely won't be looking to do that until the storage building reaches its useful life and needs major repair. Then, the question is, do we have a thriving storage business or is there a better use for this land?
Buy industrial land relatively close to residential/commercial areas. Build self storage, wait 20-40 years. Eventually people are going to feel the need to upzone that under utilized industrial land that is so close to a thriving, gentrified neighbourhood.
The City of Vancouver recently upzoned its Flats industrial area, and went to the extra step of banning self storage to ensure people actually build buildings that are capable of employing people.
