PGIM Lends $57M to Turn a Midtown Office Into Self Storage

PGIM has lent $57,000,000 against a Class C office building at 152 West 36th Street in Manhattan, and what it funds is not apartments. Mequity Companies and Flatiron Equities plan to take the eight-story building to 16 stories and operate it as a self storage facility for Manhattan Mini Storage, roughly 1,500 units. Colliers arranged the debt. Commercial Observer reported the loan on September 14.

Why it matters

Every Manhattan conversion headline this year has ended in apartments. This one could have. City records show the lot zoned M1-9A/R12 with a residential floor area ratio of 15.0, the same zoning we reported carrying a West 35th Street loft to 166 apartments two blocks away, and the corridor behind 13 conversions filed in six days. The sponsor chose storage, and an institutional lender underwrote it. Storage carries no affordability requirement, no dwelling unit layouts and no light and air constraints, so a 5,925 sq ft lot with a built floor area ratio of 8.75 converts into rentable area on different terms than a residential program would. For anyone holding a small Class C building in Midtown South, that is the transferable point: the use that clears the debt may be the one that asks least of the envelope, not the one with the highest rent per foot.

The numbers

The deed recorded September 24, 2024 at $23,800,000, from Hadji Baba Properties Corp., care of Falcon Properties. Against the 51,853 sq ft on the tax roll that is $459 per sq ft. The $57,000,000 PGIM loan works out to $760 per rentable sq ft on the sponsor’s 75,000 sq ft target, and $692 per sq ft against the 82,397 sq ft of construction floor area the enlargement filings declare.

Three mortgages recorded alongside that deed, for $36,641,200, $8,498,720 and $5,060,080. They total $50,200,000, or 211 percent of the purchase price, and all three were assigned to OakNorth Bank PLC of London in the same recording. ACRIS is published through August 31, 2026 and shows no document recorded on this lot since September 24, 2024, so the PGIM mortgage is not yet in the public file.

The alteration job is M01003551, filed March 1, 2024, six months before the sponsor closed, approved September 11, 2024, and permitted June 9, 2025. Declared cost across the sponsor’s filings is $11,452,290, a filing figure rather than a budget.

What’s next

A post-approval amendment was filed September 3, 2026 and is still in plan examiner review. The sponsor targets a temporary certificate of occupancy in early 2027. Watch for the PGIM mortgage to surface in ACRIS, which will show whether it retires the OakNorth position outright. More in the New York market.