This national brand has big plans for two vacant Modesto buildings on McHenry Avenue
One company is taking over two large vacant buildings in the heart of Modesto.
The long-empty Long’s Drugs and a former two-story gym along McHenry Avenue will both be repurposed. The buildings have become eyesores along one of the city’s busiest commercial thoroughfares.
Now, thanks to U-Haul Company of Central Valley, both sites will be converted to self storage and moving facilities. Earlier this year U-Haul announced plans to take over the former Long’s site, at 1625 McHenry Ave., as well as the old Toys R Us building on Sisk Road.
But U-Haul Company of Central Valley President Chris Trudell said the Toys R Us site plans were abandoned after the company ran into zoning issues with the property. The Toys R Us building, which has sat empty since the iconic toy seller went out of business in 2018, is now back up for lease and available.
Instead, the company looked closer to its other planned facility in the ex-Longs Drugs building for a secondary site. What they found was a former Fitness Evolution health club building at 2012 McHenry Ave., next door to Petsmart. The company acquired the 45,087-square-foot building near the start of October.
The mostly vacant two-story building has one remaining tenant, Trudell said in an email interview. The tenant will remain through some of the process. The project has already received both conditional use and zoning board approval to build a modern indoor self-storage facility.
Expect clean-up and construction on the building to start in the next “month or so,” Trudell said. These types of projects typically take about six months to complete, he said, so the company is aiming to open next year.
Once completed the new indoor facility will have approximately 500 indoor climate-controlled self-storage units. Early plans for the site will also create a warehouse for portable self-storage containers through the company’s U-Box moving pods program.
The new indoor self-storage facility will join the Longs Drugs site, which was announced earlier this year. That site will be renovated into a full-service U-Haul retail and self-storage facility with a large retail showroom, indoor climate-controlled self-storage, towing accessories and more.
The Longs Drugs building has been empty and boarded up since 2010, when the company was purchased by CVS and a new pharmacy with an attached drive-thru was constructed in McHenry Village at the corner of McHenry and Briggsmore avenues.
Work has already begun at the Longs site. U-Haul banners have gone up on the building and a temporary showroom is open inside offering trucks, trailer and other moving supplies. Trudell said the company is in the permitting process to begin construction.
The company hopes to be done with construction and fully open next spring. The two projects fall under U-Haul’s Corporate Sustainability initiative, which encourages the repurposing of old buildings instead of new construction. About 70% of U-Haul owned-and-operated facilities are renovated structures.
The new UHaul developments are among a handful of high-profile self-storage projects under development in Stanislaus County.
Last month, the Ceres Planning Commission unanimously approved a project that would bring a new Public Storage self-storage facility into the vacant Kmart building, as well as build new restaurants and retails on the front of the property along Hatch Road. They will renovate and repurpose the 84,000-square-foot building that has been empty since the discount seller went out of business three years ago.
Public Storage has also just completed new construction on a self-storage facility on Sylvan Avenue in north Modesto, near a U.S. Post Office branch.
This story was originally published November 8, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
