"I sure had no physical power to remove him myself. But within two minutes, there were like 14 cop cars and the bomb squad out here," says Baisden.

As it turned out the smell was not a bomb, but Mace, which the man had sprayed all around his locker to prevent others from breaking in.

"I guess he wanted the extra security," says Baisden.

Sandra Baisden manager of Access Self Storage

The self-storage industry has been trying to convince investors and the business community that the business of providing lockers and rooms won’t go down as a fad. Baisden says that storage space was once considered a luxury and that people "were driving up in Limos," but now "it is a necessity for many people."

"We are all hoarders. We hoard and keep all sort of stuff because we can’t part from it," says Judith Burke, director of the New York State Self Storage Association in Albany, N.Y. "And our industry serves this human need to horde."

According to Burke, her storage association has grown from 30 members to more than 200 in the six years she has been involved. The rise in membership, she says, is due to outreach.

The average tenant at a self-storage facility will stay on average three to four months according to industry managers. Eighteen percent to 20 percent of these customers will be delinquent on their monthly payments. Monthly rates range from a few hundred dollars a month for a 10-by-10 foot room that can store a couch to nearly a thousand dollars for 20-by-10 foot room that could fit a car. Prices depend also on location and security.

Six years ago, Jack Guttman teamed up with two others who were building their first self-storage facilities in the Connecticut area.

"Basically I asked if together could we do it better," says Guttman, who worked for a chain of self-storage facilities. Guttman, along with a former real-estate agent and a former school administrator, began National Storage Partners. Now they have 11 storage facilities in the New York area, building at a rate of three to four a year.

Guttman’s strategy is to have facilities all around the perimeter of Manhattan to offer lower prices at a convenient location.

"The market is just waiting for us so we need to be aggressive," says Guttman as he toured his lastest facility on Southern Avenue in the South Bronx.

"I have a product that I sell to my customers," says Guttman. "My product is space, and the more of it I get the more of it I can sell."