He is making this office building great again.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law and campaign advisor, developer Jared Kushner, bought the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ iconic Watchtower headquarters in Dumbo last Wednesday, which he plans on turning into a tremendous, classy office complex by September next year.
“Over the next year, we’ll begin transforming the property into one of the marquee urban office campuses anywhere in the country, let alone New York City,” said Kushner, who is married to the Donald’s daughter Ivanka Trump and is reportedly an incredibly influential figure in his Presidential bid.
His family firm Kushner Companies paid $340 million for the two-city-block-sized building and three neighboring Columbia Heights properties, in partnership with fellow developers Aby Rosen and Livwrk, a source with knowledge of the deal claimed.
The headquarters building is most famous for its iconic 47-year-old neon red “Watchtower” sign — the name of the church’s newsletter — but a spokesman for the company refused to say whether it would survive the makeover.
The Witnesses have been based in Brooklyn for more than 100 years, but are selling off the organization’s Dumbo properties before relocating upstate this year, and Kushner is snapping the structures up.
He already bought five of their other buildings in 2013 for $373 million, and has since turned those into an office and retail mega-hub dubbed Dumbo Heights, which is now home to online craft e-tailer Etsy.
Kushner is also rumored to be purchasing a massive vacant parking lot at Jay and Front streets from the religious organization, where he could build a thousand units of new housing. The company is indeed under contract to buy the land but hasn’t closed the deal, the source claimed.
The property mogul also owns the Observer newspaper, where he recently penned an opinion piece defending his father-in-law against accusations of anti-Semitism.
