Am I hearing the church admitting the mall is actually costing five billion dollars?

If so and if my figures are correct and figuring 10 million actual adult members (that's an over estimate) it comes to $500 per member. I wonder how those members in Africa or Europe feel about the expenditures spent on glorifying Temple Square for the benefit of the big guys. Most members will never see it.

I have talked to some people about it that are still in the church. I am trying to understand why it doesn't bother them. I have heard from a few people that have been told that the mall will generate income that the church can use for charitable purposes. 5 Billion, even invested poorly, would give a 250 million dollar a year return. Is it possible that the mall will generate more revenue than that for the church?

I call BS. The cult never said they built this to raise money for charity. If so, let's see the books at the end of the financial year.

I agree. It's BS. I just think that is how some people are rationalizing it.

Right. Just like the cult tells people that the tithing is for charity when only 3 percent goes to charity. what I want to know is who's getting rich off of this.

It bothers me.

However for a TBM it would be a parable of the talents thing. The LDS church is the steward of the money and it is righteous to attempt to increase it. Some day there may be a real need for that money so to hold onto it now isn't a bad thing.

to Most of us, the ChurchCo refusal to divulge finances is another Nail In Their Coffin.

too bad they choose to sacrifice members in favor of secrecy.

Hinkley said the members not the public could review the financial records. I just figured any one paying tithing was too spiritually whipped to question. Does the church have any obligation to open the books by tithe paying member request?

Some people are super proud of how rich the church is. It makes it true. This doesn't phase my family at all. They think it's great. They are convinced the church is charitable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2012 11:24PM by suckafoo.

THAT is what I think is the sickest thing of all! It isn't as if the cult is paying out dividends to the shareholders or something - nobody gets a penny back out of it unless they are 1stP, Q12, or 70s!

center and how much it cost. It does not bother them and they feel like part owners.

If the church were poor they would still claim it was true. They'd say "God wants us to be humble", or something like that, therefore the church is true. Anything will be spinned into the church being true. There is no way it could ever be false since it's the "one true church".

And I think somewhere inside some of the members wonder how charitable it is. It's just something they all say to themselves to make themselves believe the church is true. Just like any other myths/theories they all say to each other to reinsure themselves that they're right.

I think they are so rich that it doesn't much matter if the mall is profitable. They are making Salt Lake their promised land in every way they can, and all the tithe money goes to Salt Lake as if a set of big needy hands are outstretched while members willingly give money they could have used to make their mortgage or buy a loaf of bread. Money is money. No matter how it's washed and dried and filtered the corp is rich from the tithe payers. And they certainly know how to grow it.

Hey, no tithing dollars were used, so what's the problem?

Follow the profit, follow the profit.

Only $1.5 billion went into the mall, but still that's very overpriced. My TBM father was pretty upset about the Church spending his tithing money on such an obvious money laundering project in another state where he can't even benefit from it. He thought it was a misuse of tithing funds, but only expressed that opinion after I brought it up in a way that I knew would infuriate him. (I said that for the cost of City Creek Center, the Church could have had three Burj Khalifas.)

Wow.

1.5 million for the mall of the 5 billion sounds right. Still as Mak said, that is way overpriced. To put thisinto perspective.

the Mall still cost $2,200 psf (1.5b 700,000sf). The Beverly Center, a high end Mall in Beverly Hills, (which has much higher rents than Citi creek) and is also 700,000 sf in size, sold at the top of the market in 2006 for $600 psf.

Furthermore, the market value of citicreek mall is around $250,000,000 to $350,000,000.

This is based on a income valuation approach, which is the standard in the valuation of income producing real estate.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=19428181&title=a-look-inside-as-city-creek-centers-completion-nears&s_cid=featured-1

SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake Chamber says $5 billion have gone into the revitalization of downtown Salt Lake City, and a major part of that is soon to open in the new City Creek Center.
The project is nearly finished, and H. David Burton — presiding bishop of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the man who has overseen City Creek from the beginning — anticipates the center's Mar. 22 grand opening will be just that: grand.

Not accepting any more comments there after a few impotent criticisms countered by five times as many rah, rah ain't the mall wonderful, don't criticize such a humanitarian church, and think of all the good this (tithing money from other church members around the world) will do Salt Lake City and us. The self-centeredness and self-serving arguments of some of the mall's cheerleaders is disgusting.

From the comments thread:

Escapefromutah
posted 62 days ago
In my opinion there are/were better ways to spend this money. This money should have been spent helping low income people receive housing, or any kind of charitable use. Instead, this is a monument to mammon. Shameful! I will never spend a dime there, nor would i want to live there, its probably outrageously expensive.

Mom2Five
[Argued, wrongly that the LDS church gives out so much in humanitarian aid and in helping the poor. Too bad this non-sequitur of bad information didn't get trounced by someone with access to Google.]


Jack D.
posted 62 days ago
Your comment reminds me of this:

4 Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him,

5 Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

6 This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein

Ligthen up, this will bring great things to downtown. Which will boost the economy, which is good for all.

[This seems to me the most vicious and selfish argument against the mall's critics. If you are disgusted by the amount of money the LDS church spends on the mall, you just need to lighten up and, really, you want to steal from the poor.]

Lori E.
posted 61 days ago
I see it that the church has a huge interest and obligation to maintain the upkeep of downtown; afterall the Mormons founded it and built it up. The temple is there and the church has reason to maintain the upkeep of its founded area and not diminish the value of SLC and Temple grounds. I appreciate the church doing this and keeping SLC a nice place to live/visit, etc. Try to appreciate the good people do. You would complain if the church let downtown turn into rubble, which is where it was headed, so be happy with the positive that they have done for our state and community.

[The LDS church founded SLC, so it is within its rights to suck tithing money in from members around the world and invest it SLC and SLC's citizenry.]

Okay, I NEVER talk about the church on Facebook because I'm friends with so many LDS whom I respect. But when the mall opened I just had to link an article and ask if any members were bothered by it.

One girl (in Germany) said, "Ha! I think it's great! First they built a city in the desert, then they built a mall. I want to go there!". Well, this made no sense to me. Why is building a mall such a feat? It's not as if they built a mall their first month in SLC. . .

Only one other member responded and it was all the TBM bullshit. She's a lovely person and definitely not stupid, but she made herself sound so dumb with her response. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to take her down logically by myself. All my (more reasonable/less biased) friends did it for me.

I'm actually glad the friendship remained in tact. She's married with a baby and she's barely 21 years old. There may be a day she needs a safe place to talk about how the church has affected her life.

"Children's Hunger Relief Fund believes that providing access to safe drinking water is one of the most powerful and cost-effective things that we can do to invest in a child's life - in fact, to invest in a whole community of children and their families for years to come. We have funded thousands of projects over the past 25 years - for families, communities, children's homes and schools.

A small tank to collect and store clean water costs as little as $300 and will serve 15-20 people. A well for an entire community or school costs an average of $3,000. Both projects have an average useful life of 20-25 years. That works out to a cost of a few pennies per month to provide clean, life-saving water to thousands of people over the next 20-25 years."

http://www.chrf.org/future-clean-water.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 11:23AM by Stumbling.

A worthy cause.

But unless you also give them free birth control devices,keeping people alive for a while does not help much.

Within 15 years you will have an even larger population to worry about.

Yep, KSL reported it as $5 billion. The reason they built the mall is the same reason they built the conference center. Neither project was needed. Why build a massive conference center when everyone who wants to watch it can watch on TV? Why build an obscenely expensive downtown mall when malls are fading out?

Simple: Billions of dollars went to connected families and businesses through construction companies, leasing agencies, subcontractors, materiel suppliers, and so on. The church is a huge cash cow, and an interconnected network of prominent families and businesses suckle at it when they can.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2012 05:34PM by runtu.

runtu is right. Construction loans of enormous size are used to launder tithing funds to the families in power (those who live "on the bench"). Thus, Mormon leaders thrive and are "blessed."

project??? I used to travel the country marketing products and shows in Malls and convention centers...so i know a bit about malls...this mall is not a big deal in terms of square footage.
700,000 qualifies it as a "regional" mall" but really
1,000,000 million square feet is a nice size mall with many malls over that size...it is a big project because of the office and real eatate...not because the mall is so big.
Two anchors is the minimum to be called a regional mall...it looks like downtown SLC is loaded for bear what with Gateway just having been redone...at least that is what i have read.
Right accross the street from the Salt Palace huh? I had a show there too. I kinda liked SLC...kinda...beautiful view...great skiing moments away...try finding a "real" bar in the '80's though...people carried booze in their cars!! right i mean you had to have your own bottle back then right? thats what i remember...could be wrong cause that sounds so wrong...school me all you SLC'ers!! :)

Y'all talk like the church actually put money into the mall. I say it's 100% financed and not one red-assed dime of LDS equity went into it. It's leveraged out the asshole.

Ron

I think others have pointed this out, but the actual City Creek Mall cost 1.5 billion. The 5 Billion is in reference to the total revitalization costs for downtown SLC - not all of which is paid for by the LDS church. Also, the LDS church (Morg) doesn't technically own the mall, it is owned by Property Reserve, Inc. and/or City Creek Reserve, Inc., for-profit arms of the church.

The question for me is, why does a church have a "for profit" arm or arms? Is it a church or a business? No man can serve two masters, but they are trying. One reason is obviously to preserve the tax-exempt status of the church part of the empire.

Also, this is nothing new for the LDS church. The for-profit arms have owned malls before (the ZCMI mall), and tons of commercial real-estate in downtown SLC, and ranches, etc. The only thing new here is the scale of the development.

It would be fascinating to know where all the money is coming from and where it is going. Is the mall profitable? If so, where is the money going? Are they plowing it into other investments, or are they hoarding the cash? Also, someone raised the possiblity that it could be financed to the hilt. Is this the case or did they finance it themselves with cash on hand. If so, that's a hell of a lot of cash.

Finally, these are for-profit corporations. They are controlled and managed by the LDS church. A for-profit corporation can make donations to charity. Have these corporations made any donations to charity? How much? If not, why not? The church and its leaders control these corportions, they can donate the profits to charity if they really wanted to.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett gave away most of their fortunes to charity. Are they more Christ-like than the LDS for-profits? Apparently so.

testing123 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think others have pointed this out, but the
> actual City Creek Mall cost 1.5 billion. The 5
> Billion is in reference to the total
> revitalization costs for downtown SLC - not all of
> which is paid for by the LDS church.

My opinion..

I don't remember SLC bonding for any part of the City Creek project. SLC , County or city did not put up money for the $5 billion project. They didn't have to and they didn't have the funds during the down turn. Utah was in a budget crisis. Churchco had the money and the means.
Bottom line SLC and private investors were minimal. They all
saw who the big shot with the money was and jumped on board
the Corp of LDS coat-tails.
If I am wrong at least correct me where the county, City or State put out hundreds of millions (at least) to be a part time player. The only thing they gave was tax relief to Churchco at taxpayers expense.