20 miles west of Portland, Oregon in Hillsboro a new storage facility opened called Premier Storage. True to its name, Premier Storage is a first class facility offering the best amenities and the latest in security technology. Opening their doors in October of 2008, Premier offers its customers wine storage, mail boxes service, and ease of mind with the latest advances in security.

Premier is not your typical looking storage facility. With its two story glass atrium in the lobby and office, use of split-faced block with smooth faced insulated panels, along with four levels of glass, it looks more like a modern office building. Palm trees were planted throughout the landscape bringing a laid back southern California feel to the Pacific Northwest.

Customers will first notice they no longer need to remember a numerical password for entrance into the facility. This state of the art facility uses the same security technology used by corporations around the world with smart/proximity cards. The customer only needs to waive the card within a few inches of the key pad to gain entrance. No more wasted time retrieving lost passwords, saving both customers and on site managers a lot of time. Once inside, the customer will only be able to open the unit associated with that smart card. Because of its location in the rainy Pacific Northwest, the owners wanted to keep their customers dry from the rain by designing in a 7 car loading/unloading covered area. To ensure they were maximizing the size of the facility, the building was designed so that the 3rd and 4th floors extended over the loading area.

Once the customer is inside the building they’ll be able to easily remember their unit location due to the street signs used to name the hallways. With the increased popularity of wine collection these days, Premier also offers customers a safe and secure place to store their wine at a constant temperature and optimal humidity levels. While most hallways are painted white, the hallways near the exterior were provided with a galvalume finish to match the metallic window framing, giving the building a polished and modern look.

One of the major challenges facing the owners of Premier was a Camperdown elm tree located on the property. The tree was planted in 1916 making it the oldest known elm tree in Oregon according to the Oregon Heritage Tree Program. Since the tree was in the footprint for the proposed building and because the owners did not want to cut down the oldest living elm, they decided to move the tree outside the building footprint. After the tree was dosed with root hormones and soil and root samples were taken to ensure the tree’s healthy condition, a 190-ton crane was used to move the 73,000 pound tree 40 feet. An arborist with the Oregon Heritage Tree Program continues to watch and monitor the Camperdown elm and expects it to put forth another growth spurt in a couple of years.