After more than a year of searching, we’ve finally found a great building, large enough to accommodate our entire operation under one roof. At nearly 14,000 sqft, it is the space we’ve dreamed of for more than 10 years. The space is perfect EXCEPT it’s next to the transitional housing facility, city sanctioned tent city, the soup kitchen, and the food bank. We’re an auction house and our customers would come to the facility to drop of their consignment items and to pick up their winning bids.
I’ve thought about electronic access with fencing to the street with gates, but will that be enough to deter them? Am I making a horrible decision with my life savings?
I worked for a place that did that. There’s a break-even point where the cheap space becomes worth the cost of security, but 14,000 sqft isn’t it.
They had over 300,000 square feet and several dozen armed guards, but it still wasn’t any sort of bargain and eventually they closed.
Even if the property is free, it’s not worth the effort or the security costs, and bad areas are much more dangerous than they used to be. 20 years ago, someone might get robbed. Now there are routine drive-bys with automatic weapons.
You can easily find 14K SqFt somewhere that’s cheap and merely inconvenient, but won’t scare off the customers.
TL/DR: “Don’t do it”