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| WT buildings are being taken over by techies ~ NY Times |
Members carried forth their message on street corners and at subway stops, handing out pamphlets printed at their headquarters, known as the Watchtower, a complex of beige-brick factories at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge.
But during the last decade, a new Brooklyn gospel arose, one of techies, artisans and entrepreneurs. It turns out the Watchtower makes a pretty nice cathedral for them, too.
With a move of their headquarters to Warwick, N.Y., the Witnesses have been selling their city holdings — more than 30 buildings over the last 10 years, largely to residential developers. Among the properties were immaculately maintained townhouses and the Bossert Hotel, where the Dodgers used to stay, and the huge old warehouse at the foot of Atlantic Avenue that now houses the One Brooklyn Bridge Park condominiums.
The most obvious use for the six brick behemoths, also known as Brooklyn Bethel and clustered around Pearl and Sands Streets, would have been loft apartments; Dumbo has quickly become one of the most expensive residential neighborhoods in the borough. But the Bloomberg administration was desperate to keep the spaces commercially zoned, to provide homes for the city’s growing tech sector.
The buildings in the Dumbo Heights project are getting a top-to-bottom makeover before tenants can move in.
The team behind Dumbo Heights has the luxury of rebuilding the entire space from top-to-bottom, inside-out without any existing tenants to get in the way — which was not the case for many of the old loft buildings that became hubs for the likes of Google and Tumblr. And the partnership has a bit of an advantage over traditional developers in knowing what tech companies want. Mr. Kushner works with his brother Josh’s Thrive Capital, one of the city’s top venture capital shops. The result is grander spaces for maturing businesses looking to take big blocks of space.
Little has outwardly changed in the five industrial buildings, built between 1909 and 1967 and ranging between nine and 12 stories. The interiors are largely raw, with plenty of room for media walls, sculptures and amorphous furniture, though just below the surface will be the latest fiber optics and wireless technology. A mix of pieces by Brooklyn and international artists from Mr. Rosen’s collection will also fill the spaces.
Outside, the green-framed windows and castellated roof of the Watchtower remain, to be converted into decks and bars, but all the familiar signage was taken by the Witnesses. (A second complex of two warehouses on the other side of the bridge with the famous clock greeting those entering the borough over the Brooklyn Bridge has yet to be sold, though a deal is said to be in the works.) The Dumbo Heights team is building on the success of Two Trees Management, the father-son partnership of David and Jed Walentas, who are responsible for almost single-handedly transforming Dumbo into what it is today, from twee retailing to eight-figure penthouses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/realestate/commercial/tech-tenants-filling-a-slice-of-brooklyn-nicknamed-dumbo-heights.html
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