South Florida
In South Florida, Elevation Is the Question Nobody Asks First
Every facility says climate controlled. Far fewer will tell you where the collection sits relative to the floodplain, what happens to conditioning during a three-day outage, or show you an actual environmental record rather than a target figure. Come and ask us those three questions in person.
Come and see the environment before you send anything. Bring your registrar, your conservator or your insurer — we would rather they saw it than took our word for it.
Climate
Controlled temperature and relative humidity, continuously
Above
Above the floodplain — not a basement
Condition
Reported on intake and on every movement
Named
You know who handles your work
What we store
What we store
Six material groups. Each fails differently, and the environment that suits one can harm another.
Paintings
Stretched canvas and wooden panel respond to moisture in the air by moving. Stored well they are stable for decades; stored in a swinging environment they crack.
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Works on Paper
Drawings, prints, watercolours and documents. The damage is slow, cumulative and usually invisible until it is substantial.
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Photographs & Negatives
Photographic material is chemically active. Color dyes shift, acetate film decays, and both processes are driven by temperature and humidity.
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Sculpture & Objects
Three-dimensional works fail mechanically rather than chemically. The risks are handling, support and the point where somebody decided one person could manage it.
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Furniture & Decorative Arts
Antique furniture is a wooden structure held together with animal glue and faced with veneer. All three respond to humidity, and they respond differently from one another.
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Mixed Collections
Estates, private collections and the contents of a house being renovated. The material is mixed, and the problem is usually documentation rather than environment.
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How it works
How it works
Intake, access, insurance, loans and hurricane procedure — answered plainly.
Intake & Condition Reporting
Intake is the most important day in a work's time with us, because everything afterwards is measured against what was recorded then.
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Access & Viewing
Stored work still needs to be seen — by you, your appraiser, a conservator, or a prospective buyer. Access is by appointment and it is handled rather than self-service.
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Insurance & Valuation
Your work is insured under your policy or a specialist fine art policy. Our role is to give your underwriter records they will accept.
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Exhibition Loans
A loan request is a good problem. It also involves paperwork, condition reporting at both ends, and a work leaving a controlled environment for months.
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Hurricane Procedure
This is South Florida. A storage facility that has not thought carefully about hurricanes is not a storage facility, and you should ask the questions before you need the answers.
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The difference
How we work
Relative humidity is the number that matters
Most storage sells temperature control. In South Florida the damaging variable is relative humidity and, more precisely, how fast it swings. Panel movement, canvas tension and paper cockling respond to change rather than to any single reading, so stability is the specification.
Condition reported, not assumed
A work is condition-reported on intake and on every movement, with photographs. That protects you and it protects us, and it means a question about when a mark appeared has an answer rather than an argument.
We are not a fine art shipper and we will say so
Crating, international freight, customs and museum installation are specialist trades. We store, we handle within our own building, and we work alongside your shipper rather than pretending to replace them.
Your insurer and appraiser get what they need
Schedules, location records, condition reports and access logs, in a form an underwriter will accept. A collection that cannot be documented is a collection that is difficult to insure properly.
Start here
Arrange a vault visit
See the environment before you send anything. Bring your registrar, your conservator or your insurer — we would rather they saw it than took our word for it.
Tell us roughly what the collection is and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right facility for it.
Common questions
- Are you above the floodplain?
- Yes. It is the first question to ask any Florida facility, because no amount of procedure compensates for elevation.
- What relative humidity do you hold?
- A stable band, held continuously. The stability matters more than the exact figure, and we will show you the record.
- Can we visit before committing?
- Yes, and you should. Bring your conservator or insurer.
- Do you insure the work?
- No. Your policy does. Confirm with your broker that it follows the work into commercial storage.
- Do you do conservation?
- No. We store, document and handle. If something looks unstable we stop and tell you.
- Can we access our own racks?
- No. Work is retrieved by our staff, by appointment. Self-service access is how stored art gets damaged.
- Do we get a condition report?
- Yes, with photographs, before anything is racked — and again on every movement.
- Do you ship internationally?
- No. Crating and freight are specialist trades; we work alongside your shipper.
Visit us
Come and see the storage room
- Address
- 3562 N Ocean Blvd
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33308
Fort Lauderdale - Hours
- Mon–Fri 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
- Phone
- (954) 565-7233
Read our Google reviews — worth a look before you hand anyone your property.
Tours are by appointment
You are welcome to see the vault before you decide anything. Tours are private and booked in advance — you will see the door, the man-trap entry and the box room, and nobody else will be walking through.
We are on the Galt Ocean Mile, on North Ocean Boulevard between Oakland Park Boulevard and Commercial Boulevard. If you are crossing one of the Intracoastal bridges, allow a few extra minutes — an opening adds ten.
No account relationship is required to visit. Call(954) 565-7233 and we will put a time aside.
Tell us what needs to move.
What, from where, and roughly when. You do not need an inventory to start the conversation, and if the job belongs with an armored carrier we will say so on the call.