Morgan Stanley Provides $71M Refi for Garment District Hotel
By Matt Grossman February 22, 2019 11:00 am
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Raber Enterprises, a development company led by Lance Steinberg and Frank Chan, has bagged a $71 million refinancing from Morgan Stanley on a hotel it built recently in the Garment District, according to city property records.
The loan, which closed on Valentine’s Day, replaces three chunks of debt from M&T Bank (MTB) that funded construction of the hotel, the Crowne Plaza HY36 Midtown Manhattan, dating to 2015. Morgan Stanley’s debt consolidates a $49 million building loan, a $12 million senior loan and a $9.5 million project loan, and also adds $500,000 in new debt on the building, which stands at 320 West 36th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.
The 26-story, 249-room lodging went up on the site of a former parking garage that was demolished for the hotel’s construction, beginning in 2014. It’s less than half a mile south of Manhattan’s other Crowne Plaza, housed in a Times Square tower on the corner of Broadway and West 49th Street.
The newer Crowne Plaza’s corner of the Garment District has become a crowded domain for affordable hotel rooms: On the very same block, there’s DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel New York, Wyndham Garden Hotel Times Square South and Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott New York. Half a dozen other inns are sprinkled within a three-block radius, including a Holiday Inn, New Yorker hotel and Even Hotel, another Raber effort.
The Garment District Crowne Plaza has a bright atrium lobby facing West 36th Street, a gym and a modish restaurant on site, TGA NYC. Standard rooms for the last Friday night in February went for $151, according to the hotel’s website; Saturday night, it said, was sold out.
The debt deal conforms to the mold of a December 2018 transaction that brought a $44 million financing to Manhattan’s Hotel Hayden. In that instance as well, Morgan Stanley refinanced a prior loan from M&T Bank on that 18-story Garment District lodging, on West 28th Street.
Representatives for Raber did not immediately respond to inquiries. A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to comment.
