Lindenwood Associates’ Nat Wasserstein with 159 Broadway (Lindenwood Associates, Stonehill &l Taylor Architects, Getty)
Isaac Hager a short while ago missing his stakes in two large-profile qualities to personal bankruptcy sales, but that could be the minimum of his issues.
The Brooklyn developer has been accused of fraudulently transferring $7.2 million from an entity affiliated with a bankrupt Williamsburg resort job to protect the revenue from the property’s creditors, a trustee for the creditors alleges.
In a complaint submitted in federal court, the trustee, Nat Wasserstein of Lindenwood Associates, alleges the “transfers have been created with the precise intent to hinder, hold off or defraud the debtor’s lenders.”
The lawsuit comes right after Hager’s Cornell Realty shed manage of the enhancement internet site at 159 Broadway in a bankruptcy sale to senior loan provider Madison Realty Money, who closed on the Williamsburg home in November.
Cornell Realty bought the site — a prime location next to the historic Williamsburgh Personal savings Lender constructing and across the street from Peter Luger Steakhouse — for $26.3 million in 2017 and submitted programs for a 26-tale job with a 235-crucial hotel, condos and a bar and restaurant.
In 2019, Madison Realty Money supplied about $28 million in loans on the house, with Eli Tabak’s Bluestone Team kicking in a $3.5 million mezzanine personal loan. Function on the undertaking acquired underway, but Bluestone initiated a UCC foreclosures on the equity pursuits in the assets shortly immediately after the onset of the pandemic the pursuing yr. Madison initiated a foreclosure on its senior credit card debt all around the similar time.
Just prior to the UCC foreclosure auction was meant to get location in December 2020, the home entity filed for individual bankruptcy, temporarily delaying the foreclosures and supplying the debtor a prospect to restructure.
The personal bankruptcy lasted for far more than two years in a White Plains courthouse right until Madison’s prepare was authorised this summer.
Wasserstein claims that Hager’s alleged fraudulent transfers occurred concerning 2017 and 2021, mainly prior to the personal bankruptcy submitting. But the complaint alleges that the debtor entity was either insolvent at the time of the transfers or was forced to become insolvent as a outcome of them. The trustee is also suing quite a few contractors at the house.
Hager’s legal team has not but filed a reaction to the allegations. Hager did not return a ask for to comment, nor did an legal professional for the trustee.
The criticism gives few particulars about how Hager allegedly transferred the income out of the assets entity, but it did title the entities that allegedly gained the funds.
Most of them are related to Hager’s pursuits in Brooklyn and Manhattan, which include 206 Kent Avenue, a retail and workplace growth in Williamsburg 255 West 34th Street, a planned 33-tale, 330-place lodge close to Penn Station, 428 Wythe, a six-story mixed use setting up in Williamsburg, and 730 Lorimer, a modest rental creating in Williamsburg.
A distinguished dealmaker in Brooklyn, Hager is the grandson of the late Rabbi Mordechai Hager, longtime chief of the Viznitz, a single of the biggest Hasidic sects.
In addition to the 159 Broadway task, Hager not long ago misplaced manage of the Tillary Hotel, a household and hotel property in Downtown Brooklyn, to lender Ohana Real Estate.
In extra constructive information, Hager and Daryl Hagler, a nursing home investor, just lately paid out $43 million for a Crown Heights website in which Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Firm after planned 1,500 flats.
