Growth Fund 2 — A Progress Report | The AAA Storage Podcast #45

Eight months after breaking escrow, Paul Bennett walks through exactly where Growth Fund 2 stands right now, project by project. Here's what he covered.

Where Each Project Stands

Growth Fund 2 has six projects underway right now, part of a $40 million portfolio of self-storage and small-bay industrial development across Texas and North Carolina. Huffmeister, the fund's first project in Northwest Houston, is on budget and headed toward its certificate of occupancy this fall, with Buda close behind it south of Austin. Elgin breaks ground this month carrying some of the best financing terms the fund has landed since the COVID era, and a site in Hutto that was originally planned as storage shifted entirely to small-bay industrial after a nearby Samsung chip plant pulled in demand from the vendors who serve it. Blake Manor rounds out the six, with a seventh project targeted for early 2027 on the way to eleven total.

Why We're Building Into a Shrinking Pipeline

The timing behind Growth Fund 2 isn't a guess. The national self-storage development pipeline has fallen from about 4% of existing inventory at its 2022–2023 peak to roughly 2.3% today, and we expect that number to keep declining toward 1.5% by 2029–2030. Fewer new facilities coming online, against demand that keeps growing, sets up a seller's market later this decade — and it's the exact window Growth Fund 2 was built to sell into. Growth Fund 1 is already proving the thesis out: every active project is tracking ahead of its underwritten projections, and we've closed five institutional sales since last fall after two years without one.

More Highlights From the Conversation

• Elgin's loan carries an 80% loan-to-cost ratio, 36 months of interest-only payments, and a rate just under our typical benchmark — one of the best the fund has seen since the COVID era.

• A nearby Samsung chip plant changed our plans for the Hutto site, shifting it entirely to small-bay industrial to meet vendor demand.

• A 104,000-square-foot business park in Growth Fund 1's Georgetown project was 82% leased eight months after its certificate of occupancy, with a sale targeted for Q1 2027.

• Growth Fund 2 is still raising capital, and investors who join now still receive a pro-rata interest across the full eleven-project portfolio.

• We manufacture value in the development process itself — building to the spread between construction cost and stabilized value, not to market appreciation.

For the full breakdown of the numbers behind each project, read our companion article, Inside Growth Fund 2: A 2026 Self-Storage Development Pipeline Update.

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