Jehovah’s Witnesses Sell Property as they Divest from Brooklyn

Jehovah’s Witnesses are sold off close to their last bits of Brooklyn real estate in the wake of their relocation to Upstate New York.

The most recent sale was of their Brooklyn Heights, 12-story, 97-unit apartment building for $58 million. The sale of 97 Columbia Heights was to a Los Angeles-based investment firm, Hawkins Way Capital, which also purchased another Witness building for $18 million, located at 119 Columbia Heights, just up the street.

97 Columbia Heights, close to 89,000 square-feet, was purchased by the Witnesses when it was still under construction in 1986.

The Witnesses also put up for sale what is their last empty lot in Brooklyn, located at 1 York Street, just north of the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn Heights. The lot’s price is not listed, but it is estimated to be worth about $54 million, with about 189,000 to 250,000 square-feet of buildable space on 52,000 square-feet. That comes to about $300 per build-able square-feet.