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The Jehovah’s Witnesses have been preparing for their exodus from Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO, and last year they put their enormous building on Columbia Heights on the market. A stone’s throw from Brooklyn Bridge Park, the property—which sports that massive “WATCHTOWER” sign—sits on some coveted land. And now it’s reportedly getting a new owner: Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who owns The Observer and is married to Ivanka and is hated by many of his tenants in the East Village.
According to the NY Post, there’s a handshake deal with Kushner and developers Aby Rosen and Livwrk—”The pricing is roughly $700 million for the Witnesses’ 733,000-square-foot world headquarters at 25-30 Columbia Heights and a 1.1-million-square-foot as-of-right development site at 85 Jay St.” The trio has purchased JW properties in the past, forming “Dumbo Heights” and building a tech-hub and “mixed-use urban campus.” It’s unclear what their intentions for the Watchtower would be, but the Brooklyn Paper notes that “the vacant lot at 85 Jay St. is one of the few spare tracts of land in the pricey ’hood zoned for residential use.”
The properties are currently still listed as being for sale on the JW’s real estate page. We’ve reached out to Robert Warren in their press office for more information and will update if we hear back. HaTTiP
The Jehovah’s Witnesses, the door-knocking religious group that’s been based in Brooklyn for a century, is selling its headquarters and other properties for an expected price tag of $1 billion or more.
The Witnesses’ move to a town about an hour north of New York City will likely mean the end of the complex’s most well-known feature, the neon “Watchtower” sign advertising the church’s flagship publication. But it will free up hundreds of thousands of square feet for businesses and apartments in a now-trendy neighborhood at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Jehovahs-Witnesses-Could-Get-1B-for-Watchtower-Building-Other-NYC-Properties-361725801.html
