Principal Jack Cayre, James Coakley, Councilman Eric Ulrich, Ken Cayre, Guido Tebano, Nathan Cayre.
Photo by Patricia Adams
Treasure Island Storage celebrated the grand opening of its facility in Ozone Park Tuesday, and the company’s leaders said the site will provide much-needed and affordable space for residents dealing with smaller and increasingly expensive living spaces.
“There are a lot of people living in apartments in this area, and we’ll be able to provide them with off-site storage for season items, or anything they may need,” said Treasure Island Storage President James Coakley.
“As apartments have gotten smaller and more expensive, people have downsized, and they’ll use our facility as an extra closet,” Coakley continued. “If you have an 800-square-foot apartment, you probably don’t want to keep your mount bike there – but you still want to be able to access it.”
The family-owend company opened its first storage facility in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 2000 and has since launched nine additional sites – including the one in Ozone Park, which is located at 78-02 Liberty Ave. Treasure Island Storage also runs facilities in Jamaica and Red Hook, among other locations in New Jersey. The company expects to break ground on a facility in Upper Manhattan in June.
Treasure Island Storage in 2012 bought the 83,000-square-foot building in Ozone Park, which had previously been used as a mail sorting facility for about three decades, and Coakley said the space allows the company room for 1,400 storage units.
It would be a mistake, company officials stressed, to think that Treasure Island solely dwells in the world of storage, with Coakley describing it more as a “one-stop storage solution.”
Treasure Island CEO James Coakley offered a tour of the facility to visitors at the Grand Opening. Photo by Patricia Adams
“We don’t want people to have to go and find a rental truck and then have to go to Staples for empty boxes,” he said. “With one call to us, we can guide customers through that entire process in five, 10 minutes.”
The company president also noted that, along with shrinking apartment sizes, residents are frequently dealing with increasingly busy schedules – which he said Treasure Island addresses by remaining open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays “so people can get in in the morning or get in after work.”
The space is also open on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and company officials said it offers a wide variety of features, from 24-hour security monitoring to boat storage and discounts for students and members of the military.
“We offer a full storage solution – there’s really no job that’s too small or too large,” Coakley said. “We can really meet an unlimited number of needs.”
For more information about Treasure Island Storage, call (718) 395-2984.
By Anna Gustafson
