Children’s Services Agency Upgrades and Consolidates in Crown Heights

New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) will be leasing approximately 105,000 square feet of office space at 1000 Dean Street in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.

The move will consolidate two of the agency’s offices, currently at 1274 Bedford Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant and 2554 Linden Boulevard in East New York. 

The identity of the brokers on the deal are unclear, and the duration of the lease and asking rent are still being negotiated. The average asking rent for office space in Brooklyn for the third quarter of 2025 was $53.18 per square foot, according to a report by CBRE.  

The agency will also seek to lease 920 square feet of parking at 1040 Dean Street as part of the deal, according to Crain’s New York Business, which was first to report the lease. 

ACS operates across two units in Brooklyn dubbed Brooklyn East and Brooklyn West. While Brooklyn West moved into a relatively new building at 12 MetroTech in 2022, the two buildings that host Brooklyn East are from the 1970s and have saddled occupants with breakdowns on numerous fronts, causing the need for a relocation. ACS expects to be in the new space by 2027. 

 “The new location is accessible to public transportation and will include family meeting rooms, a food pantry and a boutique for families in need, and sufficient waiting area spaces,” an ACS spokesperson said in a statement to Commercial Observer. 

The 151,000-square-foot, four-story building between Franklin and Classon avenues was initially a service station for Dodge and Plymouth cars in the 1920s, and later for Studebaker automobiles in the 1940s. 

Purchased in 2012 for $11 million by a joint venture that included Jonathan Butler — founder of Brownstoner, Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg — BFC Partners and the Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, the building was subject to a $30 million adaptive reuse by Selldorf Architects in 2014, transforming into creative office space with a cafe and Berg’n Beer Hall at street level. The project was assisted by $25 million in New Markets Tax Credits, according to BFC Partners. 

The renovation won a Masterworks award for Best Neighborhood Catalyst from the Municipal Art Society of New York, and also received the Lucy G. Moses Award for outstanding preservation efforts from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, according to Yun Architecture, whose founder, Susan Yun, was the project manager for the renovation while at Selldorf.  

The building was sold to Asher Abehsera of LIVWRK in June 2019 for $55.95 million, according to TerraCRG, which brokered the deal. 

Its value faltered, however, by November 2023, felled by COVID, and it sold — minus two retail condos off-loaded separately for $6 million in 2021 — for just $32.5 million to Brooklyn developers Shiya Labin and Isaac Hager, according to Crain’s. (Berg’n closed in 2020. Meridian Capital Group’s announcement of the building’s 2023 sale described the building as “distressed.”)

Other tenants at 1000 Dean Street include coworking company Industrious and the film and photo soundstage Be Electric Studios.

 Larry Getlen can be reached at lgetlen@commercialobserver.com.