Developer CIM Group has submitted a rezoning application to bring 661 residential units — 165 of which would be designated as affordable housing — to the five-building Brooklyn Heights site also known as the Watchtower Buildings.

Located at 25 and 30-58 Columbia Heights, the site once served as the headquarters for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which publishes the magazine Watchtower. The religious group sold the Brooklyn properties for $340 million in 2016 to LIVWRK and CIM Group, which had converted the 750,000-square-foot complex site into office properties. Now, CIM Group has new plans for the site, which has been sitting empty for about seven years, according to the Gothamist, which first reported the plans.  

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CIM Group did not immediately respond to Commercial Observer’s request for comment. 

David Wellspring, CIM’s vice president of development, told Gothamist it intends to turn the “largely vacant former industrial buildings into a thoughtful mixed-use residential community, including much-needed permanently affordable housing.”

Further information about the planned features and amenities for the proposed residential buildings along the Brooklyn waterfront  was not available. The proposal will require approval from Brooklyn Community Board 2, the borough president, and the City Council, Gothamist reported.

The plans, if approved, would see the two largest buildings on the Watchtower site — which were constructed in the 1920s and `30s — be converted to residential, and would allow one of the buildings to add five stories and the other to add one story, according to the outlet.

Developers have been flocking to the Brooklyn waterfront lately, building both luxury condos and rentals with affordable housing units in the borough. 

Some of the area’s new projects include Naftali Group’s Williamsburg Wharf, Douglaston Development and Corebridge Real Estate Investors’ tower at 1 North Fourth Place, and Midwood Investment & Development’s multifamily development in Gowanus. 

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.