Jehovah's Witnesses Sell Another Brooklyn Building, Put Last Empty Lot Up For Sale
The Jehovah's Witnesses exile from Brooklyn real estate continues apace after the organization's move to upstate New York.
The Witnesses sold 97 Columbia Heights in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood to Los Angeles-based Hawkins Way Capital for $58M, The Real Deal reports. It is a 12-story, 97-unit apartment building just down the street from 119 Columbia Heights, which Hawkins Way also purchased from the Jehovah's Witnesses for $18M.
The Witnesses bought the nearly 89K SF building while it was under construction in 1986. Leslie J. Garfield Real Estate represented Hawkins Way in the purchase of both buildings on Columbia Heights.
The Witnesses also put the last empty lot in their Brooklyn portfolio, just north of the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo at 1 York St. (or 30 Front St.), up for sale. It measures 52K SF, with between 189K and 250K of buildable SF, and could be built as tall as 14 stories, Brownstoner reports.
The lot does not have a listed sale price, but based on similar properties in the area, could fetch as much as $54M, or about $300 per buildable SF, according to Brownstoner.
The Witnesses appear to be tying up loose ends at this point, with most of its major holdings already sold off. Two of the biggest properties were sold to a JV of Kushner Cos., LIVWRK and CIM Group — the former Watchtower headquarters at 25-30 Columbia Heights and another empty lot at 85 Jay St., both of which fetched prices around $340M.
