1. Occupancy Costs
In 1994, due to increasing costs of doing business in New York City, the World Service Conference voted to relocate our World Services. A study was conducted and after much research, the relocation committee recommended and the Conference voted to relocate to Virginia Beach, Virginia. At that time, Va. Beach was little known, but was developing as an attractive place to do business and the costs for property and construction were very reasonable. A recent report shows that Va. Beach is now within the top five business friendly cities in the US.
The Conference also voted to try to own property and voted for a 15 year trial. At the 2011 World Service Conference, the members will vote to either
End the trial and keep the building
End the trial and sell the building
Extend the trial for another period of years.
What you can see on this chart, is the green bars for are the lease cost for our office the last 3 full years our WSO was in NY City.
1996 the new office in Va. Beach was complete and the office relocated from New York City to, Va. Beach. – so with the blue and red you see the cost of occupancy in the two locations for the year The Blue is for the six months in NY City, the Red, being the first six months in Va. Beach.
Starting in 1997 and through 2008, the dark blue bar is the estimated cost for occupancy in New York City if we had relocated to a designated Not for Profit building, that is a rental property that is taxed according to laws affecting non-profit organizations. The yellow bar illustrates the actual occupancy cost for each of those years in Va. Beach. 1

2. Distributed at the 2008 World Service Conference
Ownership vs. Leasing
At a World Service Conference several years ago, we were reviewing the Occupancy Cost report that the Board goes over every year. A Delegate asked if there were ever any statistics available to compare Ownership costs compared to Leasing costs in Virginia Beach, so this chart was created. You will see with the passing of time, Leasing costs – noted in the blue - have gone up which is normal, while the cost of ownership – the yellow bar- has gone down. There have been a few little spurts or increases in the cost of ownership. Those increases were to cover repaving the parking lot, change out of the Heating and Air conditioning system to bring it up to new OSHA standards.
You can see the costs are decreasing. We have managed to escalate our bond payments and paid off of our mortgage in March of 2010.
Distributed at the 2008 World Service Conference