RFR, Kushner JV for BK Megadeal

NEW YORK CITY-RFR and Kushner Cos. are under contract to buy a six-property portfolio in Brooklyn's DUMBO neighborhood for $375 million, the two companies announced Monday. First reported late Sunday evening by the New York Post, the deal continues a selloff of Brooklyn real estate holdings by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York Inc., which has been headquartered in the borough since 1909.

The six properties, interconnected by elevated walkways, include five industrial buildings and a 30-story residential hotel at 90 Sands St. that now houses about 1,000 employees of the Watchtower organization, better known as the Jehovah's Witnesses. The Post reported that 90 Sands would remain occupied until a separate closing occurs in 2017, when the Jehovah's Witnesses expect to relocate headquarters to Warwick, NY. Including the five industrial assets—located at 117 Adams St., 175 Pearl St., 55 Prospect St., 81 Prospect St. and 77 Sands St.—the portfolio comprises more than 1.2 million square feet of commercial space.

RFR and Kushner will redevelop the portfolio in partnership with LIVWRK Holdings, founded recently by Asher Abehsera, formerly managing director at Two Trees Management.  “These properties feature large, creative office space right in the heart of the growing Brooklyn tech triangle,” Kushner CEO Jared Kushner says in a release. “We look forward to playing a key role in the continued improvement of the neighborhood and advancement of the market.” For his part, Abehsera calls the development opportunity a “game-changing project” and notes that the Jehovah's Witnesses “took impeccable care of these assets.”

The deal announced Monday is the latest as well as largest in the Watchtower organization's gradual divestiture of a 34-asset portfolio here that it accumulated over a period of decades, and bids fair to go down as the biggest Brooklyn property sale of 2013. The selloff began after the society shifted its printing operations upstate several years ago.

“Brooklyn was known as the center of publishing and a shipping hub,” a Watchtower spokesman told Crain's New York Business in 2011. “Our reasons for being in Brooklyn are no longer valid.”