From One Small-Town Facility to a Midwest Portfolio
Chris founded Midwest Storage Solutions on a simple premise: the small-town facilities institutional buyers pass over don’t need an on-site manager. They need better systems. That October, acquired two Allen County facilities in Gas and Iola, Kansas — 124 units between them. The first real test of the model, and the start of the operating playbook.
Acquired Townsend Storage in Parsons, Kansas — 125 units — and rebranded it as Labette County Storage. Began building the self-management operating model: reducing full-time staff hours, deploying AI-powered customer service, and automating the tenant lifecycle. In July, bought a standalone climate-controlled building in Iola, our existing Allen County market, with 71 units, then converted the remaining third of the building to storage, bringing it to 88 units.
Doubled the Parsons site, adding non-climate-controlled and larger drive-up units to serve demand the original footprint couldn’t. The expansion carried the facility from 125 units to 244 and leased ahead of projections. Expense ratios settled into the 15–25% range — roughly half the industry norm. In September, acquired land in Fort Scott, Kansas, as a potential site for ground-up development.
Acquired and rebranded to Butler County Storage in El Dorado, Kansas — at 173 units, the largest single facility to that point — and sold the two original Allen County properties as a package that October. The model had completed a full turn: acquire, modernize, stabilize, and recycle capital into the next deal.
Restructured the holding company as Flint Hills Capital, with Midwest Storage Solutions as the operating arm. In the same year, designed, permitted, and built Bourbon County Storage on the Fort Scott land acquired in 2023 — an 84-unit facility and the first ground-up development, which leased at nearly one unit per day after opening.
Closed on Reno County Storage in December — 477 units across Hutchinson and South Hutchinson, and the largest single transaction to date. The acquisition brought the owned portfolio to 805 units across four facilities.
Closed out Allen County in the spring with the sale of the climate-controlled facility — the last holding in the first market we entered — and added Sand Hills Storage in June under a triple net lease. In September, sold Bourbon County Storage less than a year after opening — our first full ground-up build-to-exit cycle.
In October, closed on Free State Storage in Lawrence, Kansas — 316 units and 62,400 square feet across drive-up storage, commercial space, and parking — an operations turnaround and our first facility in Northeast Kansas. Full-time focus on acquisitions, ground-up development, and expansion into flex and small bay industrial space.
