With fewer than a dozen people watching, the Portsmouth Planning Board on Jan. 8 gave preliminary approval to a large self-storage facility on West Main Road, continuing a development pattern that has become increasingly familiar in Rhode Island and beyond.

The proposed three-story, climate-controlled building would house 400 to 500 units on 2.37 acres near Mill Lane, adding roughly 77,000 square feet of interior space to a commercial corridor already thick with traffic and retail. The developer described the project as a modest, low-impact use, pointing to a local shortage of climate-controlled storage and relatively few daily vehicle trips. Neighbors saw something else: a bulky building, more lights, more cars, and another step away from the town they thought they lived in.

The board, bound by zoning, saw mostly compliance. Self-storage is permitted. The setbacks worked. The traffic numbers penciled out. Conditions were added, and the vote was unanimous.

What lingered, unspoken but present, was the larger story this building joins.

Across the country, self-storage facilities are booming. Over the past five years, nearly 300 million square feet of storage space has been added in the United States. Rhode Island, where developable land is limited and housing costs continue to climb, has hardly been immune.

The reasons are practical and revealing. People are downsizing, not always by choice, as home prices and rents push households into smaller spaces. Younger adults often lack room for the accumulation earlier generations took for granted. Others embrace minimalism or mobile living while quietly renting square footage elsewhere to hold what doesn’t fit. And, perhaps most simply, people buy more than they are willing to part with.

For developers and investors, storage is attractive. The buildings are relatively cheap to construct, require little staffing, and generate steady income. They are often described as “recession-resistant.” Even when people cut back, they tend to keep their things.

Local governments, too, find storage easy to approve. Compared with housing, restaurants or offices, these projects raise fewer technical complications and fewer political fights. They fit neatly into commercial zones, meet the code, and move forward.

Still, the unease voiced by local residents is not easily dismissed. A three-story storage building may be quieter than a restaurant, but it is not invisible. Its scale changes the roadside. Its lighting alters the night. Its presence signals something about what land is for and what it is no longer for.

Near the project site, a small historic cemetery holds a handful of graves dating back more than two centuries. Once, grain moved through a nearby windmill. Now, household goods will move into numbered units behind climate-controlled doors.

As Portsmouth grows denser and more modern, the buildings that rise tell a quiet truth about how people live — compressed, mobile, and surrounded by belongings they are not ready to let go. Storage units do not create that reality, but they make it visible, one approval at a time.