Creflo Dollar Makes Pitch to build Mega-Church in New York

Creflo Dollar Proposes To Build Megachurch In NYC

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Atlanta pastor Creflo Dollar is looking to build a megachurch in New York City.  Dolllar made a pitch to take over the Kingsbridge Armory in The Bronx and turn it into an arena and multipurpose facility — and he’d pay for the development with his own financing, according to sources.  Dollar’s offer was prompted by a yearlong study of the armory by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., who helped to scuttle the last proposal put together by the Bloomberg administration to turn it into a retail and entertainment center.

Reports by the New York Post state:

Dollar “wants to turn it into a multi-use facility,” one source said. “He’s got a huge following and needs an arena.”

But the source cautioned, “You’d be handing over a public property to a religious institution. That would require a lot of discussion.”

Another source said that Dollar — who travels the nation in a Gulfstream jet and packs Madison Square Garden for weekend-long revivals — has virtually no chance of taking over the city-owned facility, even though his ministries are taking in $65 million a year.

He already has an 8,500-seat auditorium in Atlanta, but a venture in The Bronx would create a base for a larger market in a building that could be used as a convention center. Officials have been trying since the 1990s to figure out what to do with Kingsbridge, a 5-acre site that is one of the largest armories in the nation.