It’s a nice large building with reasonable landscaping. Compared to San Francisco, Portland, Sacramento, and Seattle, which all look empty, this one hides its emptiness nicely with solid brick walls.
As far as location, in a town with monolithic Mormon temples of worship and large Lutheran cathedrals, this looks like a dental complex, or some non-religious building. But it does look good.
There were a few cars in the lot during a prime time for study.
What we found most amusing was the sign out front asking people to download to app to see scientology tv. They not only weren’t body routing (not that there was anyone around to body route) but they weren’t saying, “Come on in.” Nope, just download our crappy-ass app to watch our unwatchable self-aggrandizing effort to convince anyone we have religious relevance.
And what of the “new churches”? How come there haven’t been ANY since February 2020 if things are going so well? Remember when the COB announced at the New Years Event (10 months ago) that there would be 4 “new” ideal orgs opened in the first quarter. Nothing. Austin was scheduled for August. Nothing. Chicago was going to be in February. Nothing. The sheeple forget so quickly… The same “4 new ideal orgs opening” will likely be announced at the NEXT New Years event and everyone will holler and cheer and rain praise on the brilliance of Dear Leader Miscavige.
The Ideal Org Program is the definition of a nothingburger.
Hahaha! I was invited to the opening of this by a guy I knew who was into Scientology. As far as I know he still is. We were good friends for years and he even tried to recruit me into Scientology, but I told him that I don’t sign contracts and I don’t join religions. I was best man at his wedding to another Scientologist.
When he invited me to the opening of this ideal org, I thought of him never telling me he had a second kid and the other life events that he hadn’t told me about and had to learn second hand and thought this is what you invite me to? That pretty much fractured the friendship for me.
Also, as others have said, Scientology is pretty weak in Utah.
In 1977, I started Scientology in the Salt Lake City Mission. After driving from Upstate New York to Tampa, Florida (where I landed a job at the newly opened Epcot Center–a job I never started), I continued in a westerly direction, and crossed Kansas into Colorado (where I dared to get my Ford Pinto near “Pike’s Peak”). I must have been on a mission, because I continued almost nonstop, past herds of wild Mustang horses, until I arrived in SLC at the end of May (at sunset–try it sometime, if you already haven’t, and marvel at twilight’s reflection off the dome of the Utah State Capitol).
The Mission sat, I believe, between 2nd and 3rd Streets, a short walk from downtown (always busy with a Body Router or two), and a slightly longer walk to the University of Utah. The scientology building, while not overly large, had ample room for all the basic amenities (even a basement where Upper Indocs and the like were done).
From May to October that year (before I joined the Sea Org), I did the Comm Course, the Hubbard Qualified Scientologist (HQS) Course, and Life Repair.
At a few minutes to role call every night, the reception area and even the hallways buzzed with activity, with many students and PCs eagerly awaiting the start of their respective course or auditing action. It seemed we barely had room to breath, but that’s how I remember it.
I met some people with whom I formed long-lasting relationships: staff members Pat Solomon, Stu Getz and Ross Hunter; student Kathleen Carlson; future Sea Org member John McGurk.
It seemed that we were going to conquer the world. In hindsight, however, scientology’s refusal to accept psychoanalysis as a valid therapy and their distrust of medicine and the medical profession have paid, I’m sure, a heavy price on the overall mental health and well-being of those still-in as well as those who have managed to find their way out of scientology.
Well, you gotta hand it to miscavige, he devised a way to bilk his parishioners to donate money for nothing. Money for nothing. Money for nothing. And now he can claim MILLIONS if not billions of dollars in real estate. Empty soulless buildings – just like him – empty and soulless.
Aaron’s You Tube channel did a segment on how they are paying $12K in rent on their old building while their multi-million dollar spanking new, paided for Ideal Org sits empty, waiting for dave to come yank the ribbon on it.
A very good friend of mine who departed this hell hole of a church, who donated a million to the San Diego Ideal Org found out a lot of things about this Ideal Org whole extortion scheme, but the coup de grace for her was when she found out that once in their new building, San Diego org was paying rent to the Landlord’s Office (the C of S), who now owned the building.
The church of scientology and david miscavige have figured out all and any ways they can for a “religion” to get away with extortion and fraud.
Sorry. But I must disagree with your statement, “You gotta hand it to miscavage”. I’m truly sorry because I have seen your segments on “The Aftermath” TV show and I know that you do not deserve any negative feedback on anything you say or do. You deserve only the best that this world has to offer, Mary.
But you don’t have to hand McSavage anything but a “Life in Prison” criminal sentence.
Finding a way to bilk people to donate money for nothing was not due to any exceptional talent on his part. It was due to the fact that he imprisoned people and tortured them for many years. That wore them down to tiny nubs of their former humanity.
Anyone who takes someone and imprisons them in inhumane conditions and tortures them for many years will cause those people to become tiny shells of the people they used to be. It is not difficult to convince someone to donate all their money if they are scared to death of their next beating or humiliation.
It takes no special talent or ability to be able to do that – except perhaps that one must become a monster devoid of all human characteristics.
McSavage is truly a monster who will one day look back at his life in horror and humiliation.
It is wrong to attribute any positive qualities to that monster. We don’t have to hand him anything.
You know the use of the term “you gotta hand it to” here is ironic, and not meant as a compliment?
Thanks for your kind words. Appreciate it. I don’t mind people voicing their opinions.
However, I wasn’t giving miscavige anything positive. I was being snarky. ☺️
Loved your comment, Mary. Ideal Org fundraising started me on my way out of the cult. It was not the IAS fundraising but this fundraising that astounded me. Even before I started reading the internet I knew this intense focus on fundraising for a new building (when our own was nearly empty) was off policy, out tech, out ethics, etc., and I told the staff so, all very respectfully of course. I even (don’t laugh) wrote earnest KRs about the wrongness of this type of fundraising of trying to expand via “having to have before one can do” , after a time convinced that it was necessary to “bypass” the Class V staff and communicate with those higher up in Scientology who could “handle” them properly …yes, its true, I was that ignorant 🙂
Long story for another time but none of these efforts went over well. Point being, what I perceived as the outrageous, the blatant wrongness and non-workability of Ideal Org fundraising combined with the staff’s perplexing blindness despite LRH References to the truth of this, was what started me on the yellow brick road out of the cult.
Exactly. It became astoundingly apparent that david miscavige was doing things that were insane or as a scientologist might say, “Out tech.” When no one was there to stand up for you and you became the target… well, the party is over.
I remember it well and the feeling of isolation; there truly became no one to turn to.
It’s extremely amusing that Scientology’s only actual claim to growth is the number of buildings they buy and people they hustle to renovate them. It’s a losing game. It costs more to keep the lights on than the org will ever make in its lifetime.
ALL SCIENTOLOGYISTS R EVIL AND R GOING TO BURN IN HELL
Don’t paint everyone with the same brush! Not all Scientologists are evil. Most are good people trying to get by that have been manipulated into giving money, time, and sometimes their lives to an organization (cult) that they believe is helping the world and by the time they wake from the dream turned nightmare, they have no money, have been forced to disconnect from everyone they love and see no way out.
Nobody has the right to condemn an entire group of people based on the evil acts of a few.
HA! I see what you did here! Gotcha 😉 Lol
It’s all about the real estate for Devonian Barnacle (don’t know what his middle name is so I threw that in just for the heck of it) Molluscman.
It’s like Monopoly for him. Whoever dies with the most buildings wins!
I got in to the cult in 1985 in Salt Lake City. It’s always been a small organization.
The sound of Mormon crickets is deafening, though it must be peaceful inside. It looks like they were finally permitted to sell off the yellow Volunteers Ministers van, though the money probably went to Miscavige.
They literally would do better if they changed their signs:
“XENU R6 IMPLANTED BODY-THETANS EXORCISM TRAINING CENTER”
“FIND OUT ABOUT XENU’S R6 IMPLANTED BODY-THETANS TODAY”.
“FIND OUT HOW MANY OF XENU’S BODY-THETANS YOU WILL NEED TO EXORCISE, HERE!”
I agree. I saw their org before they moved to the Ideal one. They started out occupying a small building. But they couldn’t pay their rent, so they rented out the upstairs and moved the org downstairs to 3 rooms. Then they bought this huge behemoth building that was 20 times bigger than what they had. They don’t have enough staff or public to fill even a small portion of it. And the Mormons don’t like Scientology and think it is a cult. So another dead org.
Austin was actually first scheduled for March, if I remember correctly. Then they kept postponing, until finally they cancelled the event completely.
According to a new video out from Aaron, Austin has never been able to recruit nearly enough staff, plus their opening is probably also being held up by their key executives being off at training at Flag – which in typical scientological fashion is apparently getting dragged out until everything is perfect and new requirements are met.
I appreciate the report from on the ground. Though one thing I will say, is that I think old assumptions about how orgs operate may no longer be valid, and it’s possible they now do most of their business on weekends, meaning we need to see some reports specifically from Saturdays and Sundays, and ideally late when they are letting out and there may be a chance to count people who were in the building.
In Utah? Gosh, what a surprise.
One delusional flock of….fill in the blanks. Guess Capt. “Tiny Dave” Miscavigee will be the new face of their Nothingburger ad campaign. At least they got the best promoter in the business Grant “Ham Hocker” Cardone. Or so they thought.