TIMES
WALLKILL VALLEY
Vol. 34, No 23 3 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 8, 2016
3
ONE DOLLAR
Meet VC’s
best and
brightest
Panthers
bound for
glory
Page 24
Page 44
www.WallkillValleyTimes.net
Zombie properties in the neighborhood Watchtower
By RACHEL COLEMAN
Residents from Houtman Drive pled
for help at the Montgomery Town Board
meeting on Thursday, explaining that
zombie homes have taken over their
neighborhood.
Zombie homes are abandoned,
blighted properties that are caught in the
limbo of foreclosure.
“I have a rat in my yard. I thought it
was a cat,” said Julie Gregorio. “I live in
the town of Montgomery, not New York
City.”
Continued on page 2
Survivor’s lap
base grows
Jehovah’s Witnesses selling
NYC property, expanding
presence in region
By SHANTAL RILEY
[email protected]
The Jehovah’s Witnesses have
moved their world headquarters to
Orange County. In the process, their
operations have fanned out all across the
Hudson Valley. The move comes as the
organization continues to expand and
real estate costs skyrocket in Brooklyn,
where they made their home for almost
a century.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses and their
corporations own property in every
county in the Hudson Valley, in towns
like Shawangunk, Gardiner, Newburgh,
Montgomery, Warwick and Tuxedo.
The Witnesses own a 12-acre parcel in
the Town of Montgomery. Former owner
C&S Wholesale Grocers maintained
a
222,000-square-foot
distribution
warehouse on the property. Watchtower
Bible and Tract Society of New York, one
of the Witnesses’ corporations, bought
the parcel for $8.8 million in 2014.
Cancer survivor Frances Giordano decided that she’d rather walk than ride a wheelchair in the cancer survivor’s lap at the Pine Bush Relay
for Life. So she stood up and began to push her wheelchair Saturday at the Crawford Town Park. More photos on pages 22 and 23.
Religious use?
Trucks came and went from the
warehouse on a weekday afternoon last
week. Building materials sat piled in and
around the building, located a few doors
down from the Town of Montgomery
Government Center.
“I denied the tax-exempt status in
2014 because I don’t believe the property
is being used for religious purpose,”
Continued on page 4
SERVING CRAWFORD, GARDINER, MAYBROOK, MONTGOMERY, PINE BUSH, SHAWANGUNK, WALDEN AND WALLKILL