DUMBO

Watchtower Watch: DUMBO buildings sold to Kushner Cos. and RFR will have “residential component,” Real Deal reports

February 13, 2014 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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The DUMBO Watchtower buildings that developers Kushner Cos. and RFR bought for $375 million last year to turn into offices for techies and creative types will include a “residential component,” The Real Deal reported in a profile on Jared Kushner.

The story about the 33-year-old Kushner Cos. CEO doesn’t specify which buildings in the complex will contain housing. Previously, real estate sources speculated to the Brooklyn Eagle that a hotel at 90 Sands St. will get a residential makeover – but didn’t know if residential use is planned in the other five buildings on Prospect, Adams, Sands and Pearl streets which were the Witnesses’ Bible-printing plants.

Invesco, the real estate investment firm that joined in the purchase, raised questions about his father Charles Kushner’s “jail time” during its due diligence, the story also reveals.

“I got a lot of questions about the whole Charlie situation, but I was able to tell them, ‘Jared’s as clean as a whistle,’” Robert Ivanhoe of Greenberg Traurig, a lawyer who worked on the Watchtower buildings’ buy, told The Real Deal.

The elder Kushner – who had been the company CEO – was arrested on charges of tax evasion, illegal campaign donations and witness tampering in 2004, the story recounts. The witness tampering charges stemmed from hiring a hooker to seduce his brother-in-law – to retaliate against his sister, a prosecution witness.

The Real Deal calls Jared “the accidental CEO.”

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