Salt Lake City, Utah  – Gantry, the largest independent commercial mortgage banking firm in the U.S., has secured $7.7 million of permanent financing for two self-storage facilities totaling 135,000 square feet of rentable space. The assets include Storage Corner Group’s 60,000 square foot Uptown Storage (Salt Lake City) and 75,000 square foot Central Storage and Business Park (St George).

Gantry’s Charlie Kokernak, Director, with the firm’s Portland, Ore., production office secured the permanent financing on behalf of the borrower. The concurrent 7-year, fixed rate loans with upfront interest only periods were placed with one of Gantry’s correspondent life company lenders. Gantry has been instrumental in exposing the capital markets, particularly insurance company lenders, to the self-storage asset class over the last decade by working with underwriters at correspondent lenders to model the unique dynamics of the operative model.

According to Gantry’s Charlie Kokernak, “The Sponsor did a phenomenal job identifying tremendous off market value-add opportunities with these properties, and after executing on a strategic business plan were able to lock in long-term financing on a non-recourse basis to free up contingent liabilities on their balance sheet and recapture funds spent on the repositioning of these assets to return capital to investors. This funding is a perfect example of utilizing a wide variety of capital sources, first to acquire and fund repositioning, and then shifting to a permanent option once stabilized to find the best deal at each stage of an investment’s life cycle.”