More storage, open soon (maybe)

It’s late Sunday afternoon and traffic heading into Waikiki on Kalakaua and Beretania Streets is packed. Again. Is there a big shindig at the Hawaii Convention Center? No. Is there another movie on the beach in Waikiki? No.

It’s just another row of orange plastic cones closing off a single lane of traffic along Kalakaua between Young and King Streets, backing up Kalakaua bound traffic onto Beretania Street. Again.

Why? Another public self storage building is nearing completion. This time it’s the Aloha Island Self Storage facility fronting King Street and Kalakaua. Nearing completion is probably not the correct phrase since Aloha Island Self Storage seems to have been nearing completion since John Waihee was governor.

Another self storage place? Oahu residents find themselves in a conundrum. We live on an island, so we have limited space to store what we own, whether it be home or work related, or whether it’s just stuff we like to collect. Hence, more places to store what’s taking up our space are under construction. Sometimes, as it has been in the case of the latest Aloha Island Self Storage, the under construction sign spans multiple terms of various elected officials (ostensibly because of building construction permit issues).

By my visual count, Honolulu alone has about 127 new public self storage facilities in just the past year or so. We’re in the unenviable position of taking up the very storage space to store what we have that takes up so much of the space we don’t have much of.

At the rate of 127 or so new public self storage facilities a year, the island may be overrun by the very items we’re buying and then storing instead of using. How long will it be before we go into Macy’s or Nordstrom’s or Sears and buy something and just leave it there?

Why bother to take it home? It’ll just end up in the self storage building anyway. We might as well just buy whatever we buy and leave it in the store.