700 Block Storage

700 Block Storage rises on a compact parcel at 681 South 600 West in downtown Salt Lake City, a few blocks from Interstate 15 and inside the Post District’s warehouse-to-loft corridor. Downtown land will not carry long rows of drive-up units, so the project builds vertical: 70,224 square feet of self-storage and more than 500 units on a footprint where a single-story layout could never have paid for the dirt.

Urban infill is the hardest ground in self-storage construction. The build has to thread deliveries, crane picks, and steel erection through a live city block with neighbors on every side and no room to lay down material. The finished facility then has to earn its keep on revenue per square foot, which means the unit mix, the corridor widths, and the elevator capacity all have to be right the first time.

Johnson Construction erected the structural steel and the self-storage building systems that make the facility work, and the project photography runs from bare framing all the way through the finished interior. The repeating steel grid sets the floor plates, the unit dimensions, and the roll-up door openings on every level. Metal roofing and wall panels close the envelope around climate-controlled storage served by elevators and enclosed interior hallways.

The building opened in 2023 and earned the AGC of Utah New Building Construction Project of the Year that same year. That award is voted on by other Utah builders, which makes it a hard one to win on a downtown infill site where the schedule and the tolerances leave no room to hide.

Downtown self-storage construction can be done to a Class-A standard, and 700 Block is Johnson’s proof. The steel, the vertical circulation, the interior roll-up doors, and the finished commercial facade all had to land inside a single city block, and they did.