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By Root 1140 0

group develop, writing about his personal experiences in a memoir and blog, called Counterfeit Dreams, and creating a second website, Leaving Scientology, intended to help current, as well as former, Scientologists see beyond the church's hyperbolic speeches and marketing strategies. He advised his readers to look at their local org. "How many people are in the org? Are there more people in the org than there were ten years ago? Twenty years ago? Or are there less? What about events? Are there many more people now at events than there were ten years ago? You would think that if Scientology had been experiencing 'unprecedented expansion' for the last 10 years"—as the church often claims—"they would need bigger and bigger event venues. But the LA Events are still at the Shrine, as they were 20 years ago. And they have trouble filling that. So where is this expansion?"

One answer is Scientology's real estate portfolio. Since the early 2000s, Scientology has been running what former church executives say is a very profitable building and renovation scheme called the Ideal Org program. Indeed, according to numerous reports from within and outside of the church, real estate may now be Scientology's principle cash cow.

A comparable model for the Ideal Org program would be one used by another franchise-based operation, McDonald's, which is also one of the most successful real estate corporations in the country. McDonald's earns most of its income not from the sale of Big Macs, but from the money its franchise owners pay in rent on their properties. Scientology too has used this formula, assigning a special division of church management, the International Landlord Office, to purchase choice buildings around the world, often through third-party corporations, and paying for them in cash, with IAS money raised from Scientology's parishioners.

In some cases, these buildings have reportedly been leased to the local orgs, which are expected to raise the money for rent, and for renovations, from their congregation. This buys the Church of Scientology, as a business enterprise, significant autonomy. No longer is the church dependent on services—sales of auditing and course packages—for income; the onus is now on the local organizations to succeed, and if they don't, the Church of Scientology, whose investment in the Ideal Org was minimal, is none the poorer.

The New York Org, which I visited in 2005, was one of the original Ideal Orgs. As the Church of Scientology already owned the West 46th Street property, it did not need to purchase a new building, but the church nonetheless spent $18 million on renovating the structure, installing skylights, building a full-service spa for its Purification Rundown program, redoing the ornate lobby, and adding other plush features. Tom De Vocht, who'd run similar building projects in Florida, was tasked with overseeing the renovations, which, he said, were far from complete as the grand opening ceremony, slated for September 25, 2004, approached. To address the problem, some four hundred Sea Org members descended upon midtown Manhattan the day before the ribbon cutting, to finish the cosmetic renovations.

After the ceremony, said De Vocht, many of the refurbishings had to be redone, having failed to meet certain building codes, which drove the local organization only further into debt. "It was a disaster. The org already owed $1.8 million to contractors who were banging on the door every day, saying, 'Where the hell's my money?' They had not paid the building off as yet, and so they were regging the public like crazy. But hey, on the face of things, it looked like a beautiful new organization." (In Scientology parlance, regging means "soliciting money from members.")

The theory behind the Ideal Org program is "If you build it, they will come." By most accounts, however, it hasn't worked out that way. Montreal, for example, has always had a small congregation and roughly fifteen people on staff. Yet the Church of Scientology recently decided to open an Ideal Org there. Members were convinced to donate