The Realest Real Estate: Here’s a Brooklyn Building Worth a Billion Dollars
DUMBO’s Watchtower building, long the primary hub for the religious group most-likely-to-come-knocking-at-your-door-trying-to-save-your-soul-before-the-inevitable-Rapture (aka Jehovah’s Witnesses) has officially been placed on the market and estimates have valued the building at one billion dollars. And in case you’re wondering what the Jehovah’s Witnesses stand to make off this whole thing, well, the group purchased the property in 1969 for $3 million.
The Associated Press reports that the church has yet to announce an official asking price for the 733,000-square-foot building, but Tucker Reed, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, called the billion dollar estimate “conservative.”
Though the Watchtower building is the church’s most prominent and recognized piece of real estate, the AP also reports that the group owned a total of 36 separate properties before they began selling them off to prepare for their move upstate, expected to be completed in 2017.
But before they leave—and before a whole new crop of apartments and businesses takes over the space, further transforming the area—the Witnesses’s spokesperson confirmed they will honor their commitment to build a nearby park, in exchange for a zoning change.
“[Either] through our efforts or through the efforts of the new owner. We won’t walk away from it.”