I watched that video and I started feeling ill- fakest people...we need to shop shop shop....nothing better to do. It opens on my birthday too.... what a great present for everyone! I would not want to live there, even if I was still Mormon. I want a yard, peace and quiet, not see people all around the clock. I lived in New York for a couple of months and I did not like it. I like how fat bishop guy said pioneer something or other at the end... the un-american Mormons you mean, retreating to the mountains pulling hand carts? The gov. needs to bulldoze Salt Lake- of course after it becomes a ghost town. Isn't that City Center built right over top Brigham Young's fav. wife's mansion? It seems like I read that on here somewhere. I am still mad a bit that I went to a university named after that creep. DONG!! Wake up Mormons!
Lighting the way for other cities???!!!! Ummm, hate to tell you but Salt Lake is many years behind the whole downtown revitalization idea. Walking to work is all of the sudden avant garde? As always the mormons are a very deluded, full of themselves, exaggeration. Of course Salt Lake has to like it, most visitors would never imagine that downtown is now owned by the mega church and they funded all the down town.
If they own it, should it even be considered down town any longer?
I wonder if big building projects like these are just a way to quietly transfer gobs of money from church coffers, into the hands of the families of the big 15?
What a fucking idiot; anybody with a sense of business common sense would immediately realize, "there's room for every mall to survive" garbage. This is not a Tabernacle enterprise that you build with tithing money, dumb ass; It is a private sector. How many people can afford a loaf of 5 dollar bread from Harmons? That is the real question.
So many retailers are "moving from the Gateway". I thought the whole schtick was that it was providing NEW jobs-which I am sure there will be as well but what will happen to the Gateway? Lastly, I still do not understand why the members of the church believe that this has nothing to do with their tithing dollars. Where else would the church get the money from? The funding for all of their projects originally came from tithing money no matter how many times it has been washed.
So, if LD$, Inc. admits to $5 billion, then wouldn't the actual cost be more like $10 or $15 billion? LD$, Inc. overstates their membership numbers, but understates its expenditures.
"I could shed a tear very easily," he said. "This revitalization is a re-energizing of that great pioneer spirit that permeates this community and permeates this valley."
He's not the only one who could shed a tear. How about all the poor Mormons whose tithing dollars have gone into this business-masquerading-as-a-religion's coffers, when it should have gone to feed, clothe, house and educate their own families?
My 17yo daughter really likes to really get on the case of her LDS classmates about their stupid religion whenever they rip on her for drinking coffee. However now with the opening of City Creek she's planning on going to church every possible Sunday for 3 hours to pay her tithing. Specifically she's planning on attending "City Creek" and spending at least 10% of her income on those stores. She certainly has a testimony of shopping ;)
Burton: ""Every time I come over here, I think about the vision President (Gordon B.) Hinckley had for this endeavor,"
The "Prophet, Seer, and Revelator" Burton referred to had a _vision_ that this project would cost $500 million ... hmmmm, what else do you thing was wrong in that vision?
"Every time I come over here, I think about the vision President (Gordon B.) Hinckley had for this endeavor," Burton told KSL
We Thank the O God for a Profit!
BTW @ Holistic - my birthday is on opening day as well. Maybe they've just done this to spite us?
And we are to believe that no tithing funds were used. They must be back in the counterfeiting business then, because you don't just pull $5 billion out of Thomas Monson's ass. Oh right: investments, investments they scream.
Tithing $ > investment > profit > City Creek Center - Amen. I guess it depends on what you mean by "use".
snowball--yeah-- cusp babies! an interesting mix of water and fire signs...lol! It's spring equinox too....there will be no revival in my heart for Mormon moneydom. I will never drop a dollar in the name of Joseph Smith- even if Sephora is having a killer sale(I liked your signs Anagrammy). Maybe just to laugh at it, take a tiny stroll- but they may spot an outsider and try and stone me. I would like to take my fiance to SLC, he will get a greater understanding of why I have such bad anxiety. They are misinformed money hungry egotistical Yahooos! You guys are all funny and great on here! Have a great weekend- stay strong!
It would be hard for me to shop there, simply because I'm outraged that money which should have gone to help the poor, was used to build this mall. I don't care if it came from tithing or if it came from the money earned from investing tithing. Either way, people couldn't go on vacation or afford an elective surgery or help out their children struggling through college or, or, or... because they were busy paying tithing to the church. A church they trusted to use it for good - building churches and temples, spreading the gospel, helping those more poor and needy than themselves. Instead, the church invests it and uses the money to redecorate Salt Lake City, a place many of those who sacrificed to pay tithing will never see. They use the tithing funds, properly laundered, to line the pockets of the GA's relatives. Even if they'd just stuck to their original $500 million it would have been better. The downtown would still have been cleaned up and the other 4 1/2 billion could have gone to help others. But that isn't how the church works because it isn't Christ's church. It's the church of man and NOTHING says it more loudly than this mall. Whatever good it does Salt Lake City ... however great the shopping, you'll always have to wonder how many kids died from want of a simple vaccine in a 3rd world country to finance it.
The Mormon leadership doesn't yet realize that they have built a monumental testament against themselves!
LDS members have been cleaning toilets in their local wards while their church has used the money it saved to build a 5 Billion Dollar Mall just down the street.
And the Mall is just a beginning; the members have no idea how many more business ventures are out there. When it can get away with it, the church considers it none of their business. But this Mall is too big and obvious.
As Christ said of False Prophets, "By their fruits ye shall know them."
The church has always taken the membership for granted. It has assumed the tithing well would never go dry. But now things are obviously changing.
As the church's investment numbers have gone up, so have the number of LDS resignations! As shrewd as the General Authorities are, you'd think they'd notice the correlation.
Follow the money and that tells the story. I have a lot of suspicions that the middle management of LDS, Inc. has probably just shaken down their employer to enrich their good 'ol boy buddies and themselves either directly or indirectly.
The problem is that you CANNOT follow the money, since they are accountable to no one outside the secretive organization. The perfect setup for graft and corruption.
TV stations was the over the top expense on top of just the "normal" expenditures--heated floor? Retracting roof? The fountains that were designed by the guy who did some of the ones in Vegas? Ridiculous.
Oh--and the one that really got me (don't know if it is on this video) was "meet me at the fireplace."
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2012 11:21AM by cl2.
http://truthmarche.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/church-finance-part-iv/ This link was posted here on RfM a few years ago and I bookmarked it. I'm glad I did! I think someone should do a photoshoped skyline of the city against the mountains and insert three of the Burj Khalifa -Dubai, United Arab Emirates, buildings to scale into the downtown area. It would be truly astounding to see what 4.5billion worth of buildings actually looks like. (The Burj Kalifa costs 1.5billion to build)