Floyd Flake and Allen AME: Some things you probably didn’t know
on November 13th, 2006 at 7:59 am[excerpted]
(nydailynews.com) The church has an annual budget of more than $34 million and holdings, mostly property and businesses the church has developed in and around Jamaica and St. Albans, Queens, valued at more than $140 million.
Allen AME was once the second-largest employer of African-Americans in the state, behind Beatrice Foods. Four years ago, it ranked in the mid-50s among the top 100 African-American-owned corporations in the country.
The church is building 54 apartments and several ground-floor retail shops directly across Merrick Blvd. from its front door. The Allen Affordable Housing Complex is scheduled to open this spring.
It will join 300 units of senior housing the church owns a short distance away, a retail complex up the street and more than 100 two-family houses the church has built under Flake’s stewardship, most while using a system of state and federal tax credits and by leveraging the equity in other church property.
Those two-family houses, which sold for $89,000 when they were built, now command $250,000 or more, he said.
“We’ve been building for over 30 years,” Flake said on a drive through the Jamaica community. “We started buying land way back, when most surveys were saying the middle-class community in Queens was in decline.” (more…)
