Scientology’s slide show of its Saturday night ground breaking for its future L. Ron Hubbard Hall in Clearwater, Florida showed a large crowd, many wealthy donors with golden shovels, and an exuberant church leader, David Miscavige, 66.
It was 51 years ago, in 1975, when Hubbard, Scientology’s founder, directed his followers, after running things from sea for the previous eight years, to surreptitiously invade Clearwater with intentions to turn it into the organization’s new US headquarters and Hubbard’s home.
The former pulp fiction writer soon abandoned the place after his anonymity was blown, but ever since that sneaky invasion Scientology has dominated Clearwater’s downtown with its “Flag Land Base” and its intention to make it the first “Scientology City” in the world.
Building an auditorium named after Hubbard is a major step to completing that goal, and Miscavige, who took over after Hubbard died in 1986, put on a lavish display Saturday that left no doubt what it represented: Clearwater’s utter surrender.
“There are moments in history when a single location transcends the ordinary—when it ceases to be merely a point upon a map and instead becomes a point of reference for all that follows. Tonight is such a moment,” Miscavige said, according to Scientology’s press release about the event. “Because what begins upon this ground will not remain upon this ground. Its influence will extend across continents, across cultures, across generations—until its reach encompasses every corner of our worldwide religion.”
In fact, Scientology’s influence has been steadily decreasing since its high-water mark around the year 1990, and the church has struggled to gain new members in an environment of repeated high-profile defections, miserable press, and Internet ridicule.
But as we’ve noted many times in recent years, as Scientology struggles to maintain a membership of perhaps only about 20,000 worldwide, Miscavige has had undeniable success at convincing wealthy members to fork over huge donations to the tax-exempt organization, which allows him to spend lavishly.
And he certainly did Saturday, with the event taking place on a temporary stage that had been built as a mockup of the future hall itself.
And those wealthy members who had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to the project were lined up by the dozens with their golden shovels.
Miscavige himself was designated a circular area to spade the ground, and we see that he was flanked by Scientology’s biggest donors, Bob Duggan, left, and his ex-wife Trish Duggan on the right.
In an interview, Bob said that the former couple had donated more than a third of a billion dollars to the church, and that was more than a decade ago. That figure must be near half a billion now.
Also in that photo we can see the number two megadonor, Tom Cummins and his wife Victoria, as well as Grant and Elena Cardone.
Alex Barnes-Ross pointed out to us that there is visual evidence which suggests someone has been cropped out of the photo who was standing next to Trish Duggan. One of Scientology’s celebrities?
Alex suspects that photoshopping was also used to increase the appearance of the size of the crowd. We don’t know if they’ve tried that old trick again, but there’s no doubt a large audience was at hand. Our usual rule of thumb is to divide any figure Scientology published by seven, which would mean a crowd closer to 1,000.
We’ll let our experts at counting heads take a shot at figuring out the real number…
Other than the Cardones and Duggans, we noticed that The Simpsons voice actress Nancy Cartwright was wielding a golden shovel, as well as such familiar megadonors as Craig Jensen and the Atkinson-Bakers.
The event took place on the site of the future hall, which is in the shadow of the Flag Building, an immense structure where Scientologists go to pay for the “Super Power” rundowns.
You can see the Flag Building towering over the event here on the right…
And we’ll just remind the people of Clearwater that David Miscavige presided over the ground breaking for the Flag Building in November 1998, and construction moved glacially slow in the ensuing years.
Mike Rinder pointed out to us that construction of the Flag Building was too good a tool for fundraising ever to complete it. And he surmised that Miscavige finally did have it finished in 2013 because of a lawsuit alleging that it was being used to endlessly take money from church members.
Fifteen years it took for that building to be completed.
How long will Dave beg donors for cash to finish the Hall?
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(Illustration by Alex Barnes-Ross, the cheeky monkey.)
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So much money will already have been raised for this soon to be largely vacant conference center, given this was originally announced over 10 years ago at the 2015 New Year’s Event!
Of course back then the regs needed something to go after, given they’d just completed the Super Power building, and even the most die hard members might resist donating for a building that was already finished!
So no doubt as Tony says ‘construction’ will be dragged out for as long as possible. Venues like this routinely go up in 3-5 years (e.g The Kauffman Center in Kansas City), but just as you have to divide Scientology event attendance by 7, it’s probably a good rule of thumb to multiply Scientology construction time by about 3 or 4. So I look forward to attending the grand opening in 2040!
So shiny..
Where was Shelly?