City Approves Watchtower Society Plan
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A City Council committee approved a plan yesterday that allows the Jehovah’s Witnesses to build a six-structure complex in DUMBO at the foot of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges.
Despite community opposition, the council’s Land Use Committee voted 15-to-1 to allow the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York to build four residential buildings, which will range from 9 to 20 stories, and to erect a three-story dining hall and a three-story community center. Charles Barron cast the only no vote.
The complex is to be built on an empty three-acre lot owned by the Witnesses and bounded by Front, Jay, Bridge, and York streets in an area of renovated warehouses and artists’ studios. The four residential buildings are designed to house between 1,500 and 1,600 Jehovah’s Witnesses in studios and one-bedroom apartments, said a spokesman of the group, Richard Devine.
The group, he said, will consolidate most of its activity at the new complex. It will probably vacate most of the 23 scattered housing sites its members now live in throughout the borough, which will make communal living, including shared meals, easier.
Residents of DUMBO and Vinegar Hill, who have been vigorously fighting the project, say the massive complex is wrong for the area and will alter the unique character of the neighborhood.
Though council members did not seem enamored of the project, it garnered support because the group does not propose to sell the lot and agreed to some compromises in the design of the complex. The modifications included reducing the height of several planned buildings and providing security at the nearby subway station.
“I reluctantly recognize that this is the best deal for the community,” said Council Member David Yassky, who represents the district. “This was going to be built one way or another because the Jehovah’s Witnesses own the site and they have a long-term need to consolidate.”
The executive director of the DUMBO Neighborhood Association, Nancy Webster, said yesterday she was disappointed that the project was approved because the plan lacks street-level retail and is inconsistent with the scale of the surrounding neighborhood.
“Under this proposal, our streets and our subways station will be bordered by essentially dead walls,” she testified earlier this week.
