This is another demonstration of the complete fail of the “ideal org” strategy.

Boston is one of the oldest and once largest orgs in the United States (it may still be one of the largest with 20 or so staff).

But it is important for a very particular reason. THIS is the org that L. Ron Hubbard wrote about as “proof” that it was not just him who could expand an org rapidly to SH Size.

In LRH ED 339R-1 written on 10 October 1982 L. Ron Hubbard wrote: “It only took a few weeks to build the old Saint Hill org. That they did the same thing a few years later in Boston shows that it is not just I who can do it.”

That was 33 YEARS AGO. And he was reminiscing about how Boston had once been St Hill size.

33 years later, it is still not St. Hill size. And neither are any other orgs — despite that fact that LRH says “it only takes a few weeks.”

Worse still, Boston has regressed from owning a beautiful building on Beacon St in the Back Bay, to owning a boarded-up dump of an “ideal org” building and renting a second floor office in Quincy, to putting the dump on the market after 5 years of broken promises and failing to raise the money to renovate it, to in the end, owning nothing at all.

And yet this is the HIGHEST PRIORITY for all orgs. It is a requirement for “releasing the mythological OT IX and X.” And in the face of this being the era of unprecedented expansion and the most affluent time in scientology’s history (according to their media statements).

Perhaps Miscavige can explain why Malmo and Bogota and Padova and Pretoria and Melbourne and Cambridge (etc etc etc) are more important than the org that L. Ron Hubbard cited as the example to prove to everyone that “it can be done.”

If anything, THIS should be his model “ideal SH Size org” – not LA Org now stuffed with Sea Org members in a pattern he can never duplicate.

Actually, come to think of it, Boston IS the model that is a microcosm of the whole for the world to see. It perfectly represents the fail that is organized scientology.

Read the story in the Boston Globe below.



Boston Globe

After a years long delay, the Boston branch of the Church of Scientology will finally list for sale the decaying but historic building in the South End that it once hoped to convert into a new headquarters.

The church had previously declined to sell the five-story Hotel Alexandra, at the corner of Washington Street and Massachusetts Avenue, until it found a permanent site for a new headquarters. But spokesman Kevin Hall said the church decided to put the property up for sale while the real estate market is still strong “We just want to get it done,” Hall said. “We had hoped to fix it up faster. . . . Hopefully, [the buyer] will be a professional developer who has experience dealing with the city.”

Though it is in poor condition, numerous developers have been clamoring to bid on the Alexandra, which was built in 1875. Hall said the Scientologists several times tried to “swap” the Alexandra for another building, but failed.

City officials cheered the news, saying refurbishment of the building is long overdue. For years, nearby residents and business owners had complained to City Hall that the church was sitting on the property, saying the boarded-up Alexandra was a drag on the neighborhood.

The Church of Scientology is still raising money to renovate the Hotel Alexandra in the South End, at an estimated cost of $17 million.

“This is a building that has a lot of history, and it’s a really important gateway between the South End and Lower Roxbury,” Boston Redevelopment Authority spokesman Nick Martin said. “We would love to see it activated.”

Martin said the city would be open to a variety of uses for the structure.

“Given how long the property has sat vacant or underutilized, we don’t want to be terribly proscriptive about it,” Martin said. At this point, he added, “anything would be better than nothing.”

The Boston branch of the Church of Scientology bought the Alexandra — along with the adjoining “Ivory Bean” row house, since demolished —for $4.5 million in 2008, promising to return the crumbling eyesore to its former glory after decades of neglect.

The church had hoped to fund the renovation with proceeds from the sale of its former headquarters on Beacon Street in the Back Bay. But the sale of that building took longer than expected and yielded $10.5 million in 2013 — far short of what the church needed to renovate the Alexandra. Scientology requires its regional chapters to be financially self-sufficient and forbids them from borrowing money.

The Boston branch is currently leasing temporary space in Quincy Center. Marc LaCasse, the church’s real estate attorney, expects it to reach out to some of the more than 50 developers who have expressed interest in the Alexandra. Hall added that the church has already received “much higher” offers on the building than the $5.5 million to $6 million estimate a developer gave to the Globe in July.