Isaac Hager buys distressed Crown Heights office building

Isaac Hager is making a comeback.

The Brooklyn developer teamed up with Shiya Labin to acquire an office condo building at 1000 Dean Street in Crown Heights for $32.5 million from Meadow Partners and LIVWRK, records show. 

The property is split into three condo units. Two smaller retail condos sold for $6 million in 2021.

Hager is purchasing the unit at a sharp discount from the $56 million that Meadow and LIVWRK paid for the entire building in 2019. The occupancy is now around 50 percent, according to sources familiar with the deal. 

Meridian Capital Group’s David Schechtman and Lipa Lieberman brokered the deal. PincusCo first reported the transaction.

Meadow and LIVWRK bought the 150,000-square foot, four-story building from BFC Partners, Jonathan Butler and Goldman Sachs in 2012 for $11 million. The building was constructed in the 1920s as a garage and service station. Meadow and LIVWRK secured a $45 million acquisition loan from Invesco. Meadow also chipped in $16 million in equity for a repositioning, according to Commercial Observer.

Meadow and LIVWRK converted the space into a high-end office and brought in the co-working company Industrious and other startups as tenants. Once Covid hit, they struggled to lease up the building as demand for office space fell in New York and especially in Brooklyn.

Few New York investors have had more highs and lows than Hager. He lost a few of his marquee assets during the pandemic to foreclosure, including the Tillary Hotel in Downtown Brooklyn and a site planned for a hotel across from Peter Luger Steak House in Williamsburg. He also put an ownership stake in a Midtown building into bankruptcy protection last year.

Hager bounced back that same year, partnering with entrepreneur Daryl Hagler and paying $42.4 million for a Crown Heights site where Ian Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Company sought to build a 1,500-unit residential development.

A source familiar with the 1000 Dean Street deal said Hager’s backer is an unnamed high-net-worth investor.