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?
It is absolutely not worth it.
Beyond all the negative safety and customer facing concerns…
I owned my old location for 10 years, about 5 years after we occupied it a large homeless population moved into the wood nearby. Mind you, i have no issue with them living in the woods. What then proceeded was a constant stream of theft (they stole our entire power feed of the side of our building), one weekend they cut our backflow valve off our water line and just left the water running all weekend. Then they would break into our trailers. I had to hire full time security and his stories of the nights there were wild. We moved, spent 2 x the money on an area that wouldn’t allow this type of nonsense to persist and we are so much better off.
The benefit you have is knowing this up front so you can avoid this area.