I’m suffering some serious endowment envy after reading today that Trinity Wall Street estimates its assets to be in the $2 billion range. From the New York Times:
There has never been any doubt that Trinity Church is wealthy. But the extent of its wealth has long been a mystery; guessed at by many, known by few.
Now, however, after a lawsuit filed by a disenchanted parishioner, the church has offered an estimate of the value of its assets: more than $2 billion.
The Episcopal parish, known as Trinity Wall Street, traces its holdings to a gift of 215 acres of prime Manhattan farmland donated in 1705 by Queen Anne of England. Since then, the church has parlayed that gift into a rich portfolio of office buildings, stock investments and, soon, mixed-use residential development.
Read full story here. What’s the right way to handle so much wealth? Jeremy Bates, the congregant who filed the lawsuit against Trinity, argues that the church”was being too corporate and wasn’t acting on its values.” Susan V. Berresford, a current member of the vestry, calls Trinity “a first-class philanthropic operation and one that is using its resources very wisely.”
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Ms. Berresford
Don’t I remember a “first-class philanthropic operation” Trinity Wall Street performed on the “Occupy” folks? Didn’t that involve NYPD arresting Occupy and an Episcopal bishop or two who stood with them? Then didn’t that land get turned into a parking lot to make even more money, since Trinity was so cash poor? Thus they were “using its resources” and the NYPD “very wisely.”
Lan Green