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Photo of 85 Jay Street via Watchtower

The Jehovah’s Witnesses will have sold upwards of $1,000,000,000 worth of Brooklyn property by the time they complete their move upstate. But the plan to sell one site in particular — 85 Jay Street in Dumbo — has some locals fuming over profits on allegedly broken promises.

According to former New York City Council Member David Yassky, the Witnesses committed to funding the rehabilitation of Dumbo’s subway station and a park near the Farragut Houses in exchange for a substantial upzoning of the 85 Jay Street site in 2004.

As anyone who’s recently taken the F train to York Street or walked through Vinegar Hill can tell you, the Witnesses haven’t yet fulfilled their end of the bargain.

The upzoning of 85 Jay Street was larger than the average awarded zoning change because of the religious status of the group and the neighborhood agreement. Yassky voted for the Bloomberg-backed deal with the understanding that the Witnesses would give back.

“These commitments were made on the record in a zoning committee hearing, and the practice in New York City is that people who make zoning commitments on the record live up to them. There’s not a lot of reneging,” an appalled Yassky told Crain’s in a phone interview.

Now that the Witnesses are selling the rezoned lot for profit, Yassky feels the city should return the site to its original zoning or require the land’s next owner to re-justify the upzoning. However, there’s no legal reason for this to be the case.

To be fair to the Witnesses, the upzoned development they’d planned for 85 Jay Street — a complex of four residential and religious buildings — was never constructed.

Brooklyn Heights Development Watchtower Jehova's Witness Sites
Workers paint the metal fence surrounding the 85 Jay Street parking lot. Photo by Barbara Eldredge

But Tucker Reed, President of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, argues that the Witnesses have an ethical obligation to give back to the community.

In a Crain’s op-ed, Reed put forth a case for the Witnesses to commit at least 5 percent of their sales profits — or $50,000,000 — to local public amenities.

“Not only would that represent a minuscule portion of their earnings, but it’s well below the property taxes they would have paid over the decades if not for their exemptions as a nonprofit,” Reed wrote.

Do you think the Witnesses owe Brooklyn $50,000,000? Or are they well within their ethical rights to do what they please with their land and money? Let us know in the comments.

[Sources: Crain’s and Crain’s]

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What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. ““These commitments were made on the record in a zoning committee hearing, and the practice in New York City is that people who make zoning commitments on the record live up to them. There’s not a lot of reneging,”

    These agreements are worth about as much as used toilet paper when they aren’t legally binding – which they aren’t. I can think of a number of prominent cases without even trying – the Domino factory, the Reingold site.

    It’s no coincidence the 2005 Williamsburg rezoning went through on Yassky’s watch with his support, and ten years later the city still has no intention of build the park that was the centerpiece of their promises to the community. The man was worthless.

  2. ““These commitments were made on the record in a zoning committee hearing, and the practice in New York City is that people who make zoning commitments on the record live up to them. There’s not a lot of reneging,”

    These agreements are worth about as much as used toilet paper when they aren’t legally binding – which they aren’t. I can think of a number of prominent cases without even trying – the Domino factory, the Reingold site.

    It’s no coincidence the 2005 Williamsburg rezoning went through on Yassky’s watch with his support, and ten years later the city still has no intention of build the park that was the centerpiece of their promises to the community. The man was worthless.

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