This is a CPLR 3213 motion for summary judgment in lieu of complaint seeking to enforce a commercial-lease guarantee. Plaintiff 549 LLC (landlord) leased commercial premises located at 549 West 180th Street in Manhattan to nonparty tenant 549 West Food Corp., which intended to operate a Key Foods supermarket. The lease was guaranteed by defendant Ruben Luna (guarantor), a principal of tenant. Landlord now brings this motion-action against the guarantor to collect what it contends to be the back rent (and additional charges) owed under the lease — just over half a million dollars. Landlord’s request for summary judgment in lieu of complaint is denied. This motion-action is converted into a plenary action, and the parties’ motion papers are deemed pleadings in the action. BACKGROUND This motion-action arises from a 20-year custom commercial lease, executed in August 2019 between landlord and tenant, under which tenant would use the premises for a supermarket. The parties understood that the premises would require substantial building-out to be made usable for this purpose — including, potentially, modifying building’s certificate of occupancy. (See NYSCEF No. 4 at §2 [discussing modification of certification of occupancy].) Given the need to complete a buildout, the lease provided for a 10-month abatement of fixed rent, running from the lease commencement date of August 8, 2019. (Id. at §3 [c].) The lease allows for the possibility that landlord’s efforts to obtain any required change to the certificate of occupancy would be hindered by building-code violations for which landlord was not responsible. The lease requires tenant to make a payment to landlord for failure to timely cure building-code violations caused by tenant on demand by landlord. (See id. at §39.) Conversely, if a building-code violation caused by landlord “directly impact[s] Tenant’s ability to pull a permit to perform Tenant’s alterations for the Premises,” and as a result “actually delays Tenant’s opening for business in the Premises” (as documented by tenant), tenant “shall be entitled to an additional day-for-day abatement of Fixed Rent for such period of delay.” (Id.) In addition to the lease, tenant’s principal, defendant Luna, executed a good-guy guarantee. (See NYSCEF No. 5.) Under this agreement, guarantor is responsible for “the payment in full” of “all amounts due under the Lease, including, without limitation, Fixed Rent, Additional Charges and amounts due thereunder” up to a surrender by tenant made on proper notice to landlord. (Id. at §1 [i].) These obligations are “absolute and unconditional, irrespective of the genuineness, validity, regularity or enforceability of the Lease or any provision therein.” (Id. at §3.) Nor shall guarantor’s liability be affected by “the release or discharge of the Tenant” or the “impairment, limitation or modification of the liability of the Tenant or the estate of the Tenant” in bankruptcy; “any disability or other defense of the Tenant”; or the “cessation from any cause whatsoever of the liability of the Tenant.” (Id. at §5.) Although they dispute the reasons why, it is common ground between the parties that the buildout of the premises under the lease did not go as planned. For example, as landlord acknowledges (NYSCEF No. 21 at 5 n 3), landlord did not obtain approval from the Department of Buildings even to begin the work needed to change the building’s certificate of occupancy until January 2021 — months after the end of the original 10-month buildout-related rent abatement. Ultimately, tenant opted to abandon the project and vacate the premises (having provided the requisite written notice) at the end of July 2021. (NYSCEF No. 3 at §§5-6.) In April 2022, landlord brought this motion-action against guarantor, seeking payment of assertedly owed amounts in fixed rent, additional charges, late fees, and default interest — in total, approximately $520,000. DISCUSSION This is a CPLR 3213 motion-action seeking summary judgment in lieu of complaint on landlord’s claims against guarantor. To obtain summary judgment by this means, the movant must demonstrate that (i) the basis for movant’s claims is an instrument for the payment of money only; and (ii) movant is entitled as a matter of law to payment on that instrument. As landlord contends, an unconditional guarantee limited to payment (i.e., not also guaranteeing performance) qualifies as an instrument for the payment of money only. (See iPayment, Inc. v. Silverman, 192 AD3d 586, 587 [1st Dept 2021].) Landlord also contends that it has shown its entitlement as a matter of law to the sum claimed. On that point, this court disagrees. I. Landlord’s Request for Summary Judgment in Lieu of Complaint In opposing summary judgment, guarantor points to arguments — about the applicability of the lease’s day-for-day abatement provision in §39 of the lease, and about an asserted additional rent abatement granted by landlord during the buildout process — that plainly raise disputes of fact. (See NYSCEF No. 16 at 11-13 [mem. of law].) If guarantor can raise these arguments, they warrant denial of landlord’s motion and conversion of this proceeding into a plenary action. Whether guarantor may do so, however, is a difficult question, given the absolute and unconditional nature of his guarantee. Landlord, calling guarantor’s arguments on this point a “last ditch effort to avoid liability” (NYSCEF No. 21 at 4), says no. This court says yes. Landlord emphasizes that an unconditional guarantor may not raise defenses belonging only to the tenant. (NYSCEF No. 21 at 5-6, 7.) Landlord is correct; but that does not take landlord as far as it wishes to go. A “guarantee agreement is separate and distinct from the contract between lender and borrower.” (Marcus Dairy, Inc. v. Jacene Realty Corp., 225 AD2d 528, 528 [2d Dept 1996].) When, as here, the agreement at issue is “an unconditional guarantee of payment,” a guarantor “may not assert setoffs or defenses which arise independently from the guarantee” (id. at 528-529), and thus are personal to the principal borrower.1 (I Bldg, Inc. v. Cheung, 137 AD3d 478, 478 [1st Dept 2016].) A guarantor in this situation is unconditionally responsible for all the tenant’s obligations under the lease. The guarantor may not contend that it should be responsible only for the amount the tenant required to pay once due consideration is given to legal defenses and principles external to the lease — fraud in the inducement, applicability of offsets, breach of the warranty of habitability, commingling of the security deposit, and so on. By the same token, though, if an argument goes only to what obligations the lease imposes on the tenant, that argument does not “arise independently from the guarantee” (Marcus Dairy, 225 AD2d at 528-529) — it goes precisely to the extent of the guarantor’s responsibility under the guarantee’s language. In this case, the guarantee requires guarantor to ensure payment in full of “all amounts due under the Lease.” (NYSCEF No. 5 at §1 [i] [guarantee].) And the bulk of guarantor’s arguments in opposition to the current motion-action pertain to what amount of rent is required to be paid under the lease, given its abatement provisions.2 That is, guarantor is contending that landlord’s (putative) failure to cure its own building-code violations prevented tenant from opening its supermarket. Guarantor argues that as a result, upon expiration of the initial 10-month rent abatement, §39 of the lease entitled tenant to a further day-for-day abatement of fixed rent that lasted all the way up to tenant’s surrender date. If guarantor is correct that §39 of the lease entitled tenant under the circumstances to a complete abatement of fixed rent, then the amount of fixed rent owed by tenant according to the terms of the lease would be $0. In that scenario, guarantor’s obligation to pay in full all fixed rent “due under the Lease” would be zeroed out as well.3 (NYSCEF No. 5 at §1 [i] [guarantee].) Notably, landlord is not seeking to collect unpaid rent from the guarantor for the first 10 months of the tenancy, presumably because that period is covered the initial abatement provided for by §3 (c) of the lease. The only difference between §3 (c) and the abatement provision in §39 on which guarantor relies, though, is that, as discussed above in the Background section, the former is self-executing and the latter is conditional. That difference may be significant as a matter of the ultimate merits of guarantor’s abatement defense — an issue on which this court takes no position at this time. But it has nothing to do with whether a defense to payment grounded in one of the lease’s abatement provisions is (or is not) personal to tenant and unavailable to guarantor here. Landlord also points to language from §5 of the guarantee (see NYSCEF No. 21 at 6-7), providing that guarantor’s liability “shall in no way be affected by…”any disability or other defense of the Tenant.” (NYSCEF No. 5 at §5 [e].) Landlord claims, in essence, that this language categorically bars guarantor from asserting any defense held by tenant. The provision’s context shows this claim to be ill-founded. Section 5 of the guarantee addresses circumstances that might bring about “the cessation…of the liability of the Tenant” — imposition of a receivership, commencement of bankruptcy proceedings, discharge in similar proceedings of tenant’s lease obligations, assignment of the lease from tenant to another party, or “disability or other defense of the tenant.” (Id. at §5 [emphasis added].) In these scenarios, §5 preserves guarantor’s liability for tenant’s obligations even if the tenant’s own liability has ended due to a change in the tenant’s legal status. Here, however, guarantor’s abatement argument is not based on tenant’s liability’s ceasing because its circumstances changed. Rather, guarantor contends that given the lease’s abatement provisions, tenant never became liable for rent — and therefore that guarantor never became liable for that rent, either. Section 5 does not foreclose that contention. All that said, the rent-abatement provisions of the lease on which guarantor relies provide only for an abatement of fixed rent — not all rent-related charges. (See NYSCEF No. 4 at
