“You Are Land-Rich but Cash-Poor”: Brooklyn Churches Are Told Their Property Holds the Key to Housing

• Hundreds of clergy attended a Borough Hall conference on developing church land
• More than 50 Brooklyn clergy showed serious interest in building
• One Crown Heights church had been offered $250,000 to $300,000 for its parking lot
• More than 20 historic Brooklyn churches had closed and become housing in two decades

Brooklyn’s congregations were told in October 2014 that they were sitting on some of the borough’s most valuable housing land. Hundreds of clergy gathered at Borough Hall for a conference convened by then Borough President Eric Adams to connect churches with developers, DNAinfo New York reported, as the city pursued Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $41 billion affordable housing plan.

“You are land-rich but cash-poor. The largest amount of housing potential in Brooklyn lies with you,” Rev Gilford Monrose of the borough president’s Office of Faith-Based and Clergy Initiatives told the gathering. More than 50 Brooklyn clergy members showed serious interest in development, according to the report, with churches in Downtown Brooklyn, Cobble Hill, Flatbush and Crown Heights among those represented.

Some had already been approached. Glover Memorial Baptist Church in Crown Heights had received developer offers of between $250,000 and $300,000 for its parking lot. Brooklyn Christian Center Church, at 1061 Atlantic Avenue in Crown Heights, was also named among congregations weighing their options. Organisers pointed to Bethel Gospel Assembly in Harlem as an example: its $130 million project produced 47 rental units and 155 condominiums selling for $1 million to $3 million.

The report also noted that more than 20 historic Brooklyn churches had closed and been converted to residential use over the previous two decades, a reminder that a church which does not plan its land risks losing it to a developer on the developer’s terms.

Flatbush and Crown Heights are among the best-known Caribbean neighbourhoods in North America, and many Jamaican-led congregations there own modest buildings and lots in areas where values have soared. The choice set out at Borough Hall, whether to sell, partner or build, is the same one facing churches in Kingston, Montego Bay and fast-growing parts of St Catherine. The lesson for Jamaican churches at home and abroad is that land is only an asset if the congregation keeps control of what gets built on it.

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