Ciao, Isabella's ?

Suddenly shuttered, an UWS institution could be revived

When the current owners changed Isabella’s iconic green awning to a black one, they created a bureacratic mess that led to its closing.

C OULD beloved Upper West Side eatery Isabella’s rise from the dead?

The brunch mecca shockingly and suddenly closed over the weekend after nearly 30 years, announcing the news with a terse note on the door Monday morning. But there’s a chance its former longtime owner, Stephen Hanson, could revive it.

The building’s owner hinted in an e-mail to The Post that he’d like Hanson to take over the restaurant, while other sources confirmed that the landlord “reached out” to Hanson. But Hanson says he has too much on his plate right now — namely, his first restaurant in five years, which will open in the new Life Hotel on West 31st Street this summer.

Isabella’s was a neighborhood institution at the corner of Columbus Avenue and 77th Street. Its cheery dining room and sidewalk terrace drew stroller moms, flirting singles and tourists famished after hours of dinosaur-gazing at the American Museum of Natural History.

The cafe was originally part of Hanson’s 17-restaurant BR Guest empire, which he sold to Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group 10 years ago. Last winter, Sternlicht unloaded BR Guest to Tilman Fertitta, the ultra-wealthy star of CNBC reality show “Billion Dollar Buyer,” who owns more than 500 US restaurants, including Mortons and Mastro’s steakhouses, through holding company Landry’s.

On Monday, BR Guest culinary director Sam Hazen and a man in a “Landry’s” T-shirt watched as Isabella’s fixtures and furniture were unceremoniously rolled out to the sidewalk. Asked by The Post to explain the closing, Hazen said only, “The rents some of these landlords are asking,” with a shake of his head.

Isabella’s demise, however, doesn’t appear to have been over rent. Talks were underway to renew its lease, which was to expire in June. Landlord Grunberg Realty and Landry’s each blamed the other for the bitter end.

Landry’s lawyer, Steven Scheinthal, tells us that Grunberg “agreed to renew . . . and then for some inexplicable reason pulled the renewal and asked us to leave. It was not our desire or intention to leave. This was 100 percent driven by the landlord.”

But landlord partner Michael Grunberg blamed the last two “corporate owners” — Starwood Capital and Landry’s. He claims that Isabella’s wasn’t making money and that Landry’s “made an economic decision that they would walk away from litigation” that dates back two years. The messy lawsuits involved previous owner Starwood Capital’s idea to replace green sidewalk awnings with black ones in violation of landmark-district rules, and a lack of disabled-accessible ramps required under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Grunberg says that when Starwood sold BR Guest to Landry’s, the new owners refused to get rid of the black awnings — a violation that caused the city to forbid any work inside the building, even for repairs — and tried to foist the ramp obligations on the landlord.

He says that Landry’s owes his company money for the litigation over the tangle of stillunresolved claims.

But Scheinthal says, “The landlord’s claims are false. We agreed to fix everything as a condition of the lease renewal, and in fact were in the process of doing so. There is something else going on.”

The loss of Isabella’s is especially sad in a year of many closings. In warm weather, the sight of happy eaters under the once-green awnings was a sign that all was well on the Upper West Side. On Monday, the corner had no awnings of any color.

Grunberg says, perhaps wistfully, “Maybe Stephen Hanson might be coaxed out of a welldeserved retirement.”

It’s a sweet thought. But Hanson said: “Even though I love the Upper West Side and I wouldn’t be who I am without Isabella’s, at this point I don’t know where I’ll be in six months.”

But he notes, “I will be taking a meeting with Michael to hear him out.”