WT Stands to Make Millions on Properties

by XBEHERE 6 Replies latest jw friends

  • XBEHERE
    XBEHERE
  • moshe
    moshe

    Do you suppose they can afford to open a soup kitchen now?

  • Alligator Wisdom
    Alligator Wisdom

    I've seen something like this posted elsewhere, but from a different news source. However the picture of the JW holding the Watchtower looks like an ad campaign. I assume that is the brother in charge of the real estate/property department for the WTS.

    Sure, the WTS can use the money. It is a given. Seemingly the cash flow is slowing down to a trickle and they can use this as instant cash.

    Thanks for posting the article!

    Alligator Wisdom (aka Brother NOT Exerting Vigorously)

  • DannyHaszard
    DannyHaszard

    news017.jpg

    That pic up on danny's stable server pass around

  • DannyHaszard
    DannyHaszard
    THE LAND 'LORD'
    New York Post, NY - 1 hour ago
    May 14, 2007 -- The Jehovah's Witnesses might be better known for Bibles than buildings, but the religious sect's vast real-estate portfolio in Brooklyn

    [email protected] write reporter May 14, 2007 -- The Jehovah's Witnesses might be better known for Bibles than buildings, but the religious sect's vast real-estate portfolio in Brooklyn would make even Donald Trump salivate. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the Wit nesses' publishing arm, says that while it's not planning a mass exodus from Brooklyn, it is selling six of its 18 Brooklyn Heights buildings. Those include four on Columbia Heights, the borough's priciest street, which overlooks New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline. Watchtower owns 30 meticulously kept buildings and three lots in affluent Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO worth hundreds of millions of dollars that brokers say are more valuable than ever with ground breaking this summer on the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park project. The Witnesses say they are not using an outside agent and haven't set asking prices, but one local broker estimates they can rack up more than $60 million for just the six sites they have announced. "It's such a windfall of property," said J. Jean Austin of Brooklyn Bridge Realty. Austin estimated that the largest of the six, the 12-story Standish Arms Hotel building at 169 Columbia Heights, could command $35 million alone. The Witnesses have been a mainstay in Brooklyn Heights since setting up their world headquarters there in 1909. With a need to house its growing membership, the sect began gobbling up properties, both in the Heights and neighboring DUMBO, in the 1980s and early '90s, when real-estate prices were relatively cheap. But in 2004, the Witnesses slowly began moving some of their operations north, relocating their Bible- and magazine-printing business upstate to Wallkill. At the same time, the Big Apple's real-estate market was booming - particularly in Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO. That year, they sold their former book plant at 360 Furman St. for $205 million - more than 50 times the $3.9 million they paid for the 14-story building in 1983, according to records. The site is being converted into a 449-unit luxury-condo complex within the planned Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Witnesses also made hefty profits last year selling a 76-unit building on Livingston Street for $18.6 million and a 42-unit building on Hicks Street for $14 million. "They bought their buildings for their own use, not looking to cash out, at a time when the market was dead and you couldn't give real estate away in this area," said Andy Gerringer, managing director of Prudential Douglas Elliman Developments. "I don't know if it was savvy investing, luck or divine intervention." The buildings for sale include the hotel on Columbia Heights, between Clark and Pierrepont Streets, which is being sold in a portfolio with seven- and four-story apartment buildings on the same street. Three 19th-century properties - a two-story carriage house on Columbia Heights, a four-story brownstone on Willow Street, and a four-story brick house on Willow Street - are being sold separately. "The Heights has always been a desirable place to live, and Brooklyn Bridge Park will even accent that more," said Richard Devine, Watchtower's property manager. But he added that the timing of the park's construction "has nothing to do with the sale of the properties." ---- Danny Haszard gave them his egg money from my 20 hens and my paper route profits during the late 1960's so they could buy up this property.When "Jehovah blessed me" with a + $50,000 year job as an adult I kept my 'eye simple' and gave them tens of thousands because they PROMISED me that I would never need it for my old age. I will be 50 years old this month in 2007 and am disabled with an ileostomy and other health problems and NOW DEMAND MY MONEY BACK!

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    34 Orange Street was the address where Watchtower osteopath Mae J. Work and Dr. Linus Work lived in the twenties and thirties. She was on staff at Bethel and used the Abrams ERA machine to diagnose and treat health problems. It was her practice that Roy Goodrich condemned as "spiritism", and she defended her use of the "ouija-board"-like machine in the pages of the Golden Age (30 April 1930, p. 483). She also published another article in 1931 on how the ERA machine cures cancer caused by aluminum.

    Funny how long it has taken for the Society to divest themselves of a property associated with "demonism" ;).

  • metatron
    metatron

    The news of this property sale could be more damaging among some Witnesses than the news

    concerning child molestation settlements. How so?

    Because it paints a picture of extreme wealth in property held, at a time when the Society is often

    hurting for donations. This news offers no moral challenge to an individual Witness , yet it may

    encourage them to close their wallets, feeling that the Society is rich. ( assets, yes, cash flow, no)

    metatron

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