By Lauren Otis, Staff Writer
Feeling like a little outing? Why not stop by Forrestal Village in Plainsboro to do a little shopping, grab a bite to eat, and visit your safe deposit box.
That’s right. Charter Private Safe Deposit Co., a private non-bank-affiliated provider of safe deposit boxes, opened its (very well fortified) doors to the public this month.
The business is the brainchild of Jim Medalia, Charter Private’s president and chief executive officer, who has founded and operated a graphics business as well as a business selling sports balls over the Internet but has no previous experience in either banking or safe deposit boxes.
After showing a visitor Charter Private’s high-tech security setup, and its specially constructed vault — “this vault weighs 230,000 pounds, there’s 200 pounds of steel in every cubic foot of the wall, the door weighs two-and-a-half tons” — as well as the well-appointed private rooms for customers, Mr. Medalia settles down to describe why safe deposit boxes, and why him.
”The actual idea for this I had 30 years ago,” Mr. Medalia recounted. He lived in New York City and was looking for a safe deposit box. He thought he could just go into the first bank he saw and get one, “but after I went into the fifth, I couldn’t get a safe deposit box. Finally I gave up and signed up for the waiting list. Eight or nine months later I got a box I couldn’t even lay an 8½ by 11 sheet of paper flat in,” he said.
Mr. Medalia said he never acted on the idea as other business interests received priority and he decided not to contend with overly complicated regulations governing the founding of private safe deposit box companies in New York state.
Fourteen years later, when Mr. Medalia and his wife E-Ping Nie, who also works at Charter Private, moved to Princeton, he found out all over again that he couldn’t get a safe deposit box. “I had to wait and again it wasn’t the size I wanted,” Mr. Medalia said.
Then two years ago he had to get his daughter’s birth certificate from his bank safe deposit box. Mr. Medalia realized that the safe had no attendants anymore, so he had to wait in line for a teller to help him. There was no private cubicle to examine the contents of his box, and he couldn’t call for a teller so he had to go back in line with his valuables to have them put away again.
”I thought, god I can do better than this. Something isn’t right,” he said.
He checked with an attorney, who said New Jersey had a provision for the state Department of Banking and Insurance to charter non-bank safe deposit box companies, but that in the 25 years the law had been on the books no one had ever applied to start a safe deposit box company.
After two years of research, raising funds, pursuing his application and planning the facility, Mr. Medalia was ready to open. Whereas in the past banks considered safe deposit boxes a way of generating new customers and business, they now are focusing on their core businesses and sometimes consider the boxes a nuisance even, preventing them from closing down a branch if there is no replacement box space nearby, he said. Newly constructed bank branches don’t even include safe deposit boxes anymore, he said.
Whereas a 5-by-10-inch box is often the largest available at a bank, at Charter Private it is the smallest size available, with a selection of sizes including 10-by-10-inch, 7-by-30-inch, going up to the largest, a 20-by-30-inch box, “which is the size of a good size home safe,” said Mr. Medalia.
There is plenty of space for Charter Private to add new boxes or reconfigure them in its 1,000-square-foot vault, said Mr. Medalia. According to the vault manufacturer, North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc. “this is the largest bank vault built in New Jersey in 20 years,” he said.
Far from little viewing cubicles, Charter Private has three spacious viewing rooms with tables and chairs, one large enough to hold a number of people. “The idea here is someone might want to have something appraised” on-site by an expert, Mr. Medalia said.
Charter Private safe deposit boxes are priced at a premium to bank boxes, according to Mr. Medalia, but this is because of the special services available to customers, and the fact that you can actually get a box if you want one, with no waiting list.
Area banks charge around $195 annually for a 5-by-10-inch box, while Charter Private charges $295, he said. “The rationale is you can’t get one at $195,” because they are all taken, he said.
Already, after just two weeks in business, Charter Private has signed up clients, Mr. Medalia said. He said he hopes to develop relationships with professionals like attorneys, accountants and financial advisors who can recommend his company’s services to their clients.
Storing valuables at Charter Private rather than at home can help individuals reduce their homeowners insurance premiums far in excess of the cost of a box, and help businesses reduce liability coverage by moving valuable papers, records and computer data off-site, he said.
Mr. Medalia said he chose Forrestal Village for the site of Charter Private because “we are just three miles from downtown Princeton” as well as being conveniently located near other wealthy area towns.
If Charter Private’s safe deposit boxes are a hit in the Princeton area, Mr. Medalia said he intends to open other branches around the state, and even expand nationally.
”The big vision is Fort Knox meets Starbucks,” he said.
Charter Private Safe Deposit Co. is open seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends. For more information, call 609-919-1925 or go to www.charterprivate.com.
