(RNS) — The Jehovah’s Witnesses have purchased a former IBM office and data center on property near its world headquarters in New York’s Hudson Valley region, the faith group recently announced.
A spokesman for the Witnesses said that the property, once used by the IBM Corporation, is part of an expansion of facilities in that area.
“About six months ago an opportunity became available to purchase a property adjacent to our World Headquarters in Warwick, New York, and we felt it was worth pursuing,” Jason Hohl, spokesman for the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States, told Religion News Service in a statement. “Its proximity to our existing facilities made it particularly appealing and gives us added flexibility for our organizational needs, such as office space, dining facilities etc.”
Its corporation, Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York Inc., purchased the site from Kyndryl Inc., an information technology company, on June 26.
The religious group is currently building a new media center for audio and video production about biblical teachings in nearby Ramapo, New York, on land that was bought in 2009.
Members of the faith, which emerged in the 1870s and is known for door-to-door distribution of religious pamphlets, believe in God, whom they call Jehovah, but not in the Trinity.
The 433,000-square-foot facilities, called the Sterling Forest Business Resiliency Services Center, are located next to the Witnesses’ headquarters that opened in 2016 after the religious group moved its headquarters from Brooklyn, New York. The Witnesses said at the time that the move was due in part to the expense of operations in the previous location.
Hohl said he was not able to disclose the details of the purchase and said it was not yet known how the data center will be used.
“We are still in the early stages of evaluating how the facility might best support our future operations, and no decisions have been made regarding its long-term use,” he stated.
Kyndyrl spun off from IBM in 2021 and described itself at the time as “the world’s largest IT infrastructure provider,” with a global workforce of almost 90,000 people.
A New York state government document with the title “Kyndryl maintains IBM’s commitment to energy efficiency,” described the site as “a data center hosting facility that provides various levels of off-site IT back-up and redundancy to customers.” It said the data center on the site, which dates to 1972, was located within a technology space totaling 174,000 square feet.
Data centers, especially those producing artificial intelligence, have been a source of debate. Supporters hail them for bringing modernization and professional job opportunities to the areas where they are located. Opponents say they cause higher utility bills for local residents along with noise and other environmental pollution.
“Environmental stewardship is an important consideration in all of our construction and development projects,” Hohl stated in response to a question about whether or not data centers are supported by the leadership of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “For example, when building our World Headquarters, located adjacent to this property, we worked closely with environmental experts and regulatory agencies to protect local natural resources, preserve wetlands and wildlife habitats, and minimize the project’s environmental impact.”
He said that commitment would remain as determinations are made about the newly acquired property.
The announcement about the Witnesses’ purchase comes within weeks of the New York Legislature’s passage of a measure that would place a one-year statewide moratorium on permits for new large-scale data centers with a peak load over 20 megawatts. If signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, it would be the nation’s first statewide moratorium on data centers in the country.
Asked if the Witnesses’ new acquisition would be affected by such a moratorium, Hohl said, “It would be premature for us to speculate on how any proposed legislation might affect the property.”
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