(Pat) Robertson, CBN plan massive retail, housing project near I-64

[Island Blue]

Apparently Pat Robertson isn't expecting The Rapture any time soon. He's planning to build a major shopping complex, movie theater, neighborhood and more in Hampton Roads (VA).

What Would Jesus Do? Why, he'd go shopping of course!

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=107788&ran=90328

CHESAPEAKE - A proposed interchange off Interstate 64 and backed by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson may lead to some of the most high-end shopping in Hampton Roads.

Consultants for the Christian Broadcasting Network unveiled detailed plans Tuesday, announcing a 500-acre complex near Regent University that they say would rival MacArthur Center in Norfolk, Short Pump Town Center in Richmond and Town Center in Virginia Beach.

When completed, the giant complex called Blenheim Park would add about $1 billion to the region, generate hundreds of millions in tax revenues for Chesapeake and Virginia Beach and provide $15 million to $20 million a year for CBN, according to its developers. Site plans and applications have not been filed in either city.

snip ...

If the project's handlers can navigate Blenheim Park through these obstacles, the development would include two hotels, a movie theater, a department store, a big-box store, and a combination of 1,000 single-family and multi-family homes. The project would embrace a style of design in which shops, stores and offices are integrated into a town concept.

[Skidmore]

1. Now there's an empire worth toppling.

I can't tell you how delighted I would be if there were someone savvy enough to take out the whole televangist industry.

[Joanne98]

2. It's "high end" shopping of course. Fuck the poor. They have no

MONEY! Isn't he something.

[LostinVA]

3. Thank the gods I never go to Hampton Roads...

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Would the land and the business be tax-free since it will be

sponsored by a so-called religious organization?

[liberal N proud]

5. Some one needs to find a rare bug or bird nesting in that area

Just to slow the project down a week or two.

[Joy Anne]

6. What kind of stores?

Lots of jewelry stores to push all those bloody diamonds in the CBN vault? Just thinking.

[BlueCollar]

7. will they lease to Victoria's secret?

or "adult" book/video stores?

roflmao

[elehhhhna]

8. His personal goldmine is up & running again, too:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1703797&mesg_id=1703797

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

9. Well, Jesus was well known for his shopping habits.

He must've spent a fortune getting his hair and nails done. And, those Gucci sandals! Tres chic!

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

"And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.
But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!"

From the Sermon on the Mount

Note: I'm not a Christian but an admirer of much of what Jesus said.

[noonwitch]

10. It makes sense for developers to build around there

But it seems unseemly for the ministry to invest in it-if they sell the land to the developers, that's one thing, because it's selling what you already have. Retail development frequently is profitable near college campuses.

To me, the whole combining a television ministry with a graduate school is fishy to begin with. I differentiate between church-run universities and seminaries, and those run by tv preachers, because the fund-raising methods of tv preachers are so suspect at times.

[Emit]

11. $14 million in federal faith-based money goes to Pat Robertson

Raking in the dough--from all of us! Does this irk anyone else like it does me?

$14 million in federal faith-based money goes to Pat Robertson

~snip~

In an interview with the Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes, Robertson said that "if the government gets into the faith-based initiative too much, they're going to dominate what the people of faith think. And one of the things they want to impose is on hiring practices. They want to force people to be hired by religious organizations who don't share the fundamental tenets of those religious groups."

Robertson changed his tune the following year, when in October 2002, Tommy Thompson, then the head of the Department of Health and Human Services awarded a $500,000 Compassion Capital Fund grant to Robertson's Operation Blessing International.

Five years later, "the federal government has become a major source of money for Operation Blessing ... In two years, the group's annual revenue from government grants has ballooned from $108,000 to $14.4 million," the Virginian-Pilot's Bill Sizemore recently reported.

According to Sizemore, "Operation Blessing says it adheres carefully to federal guidelines designed to safeguard church-state separation and uses the grants for humanitarian relief, not evangelism."

~snip~

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=108