Karen#1
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One of our very favorite series of articles that we did at the Village Voice were based on renderings and architectural drawings of Scientology’s “Flag Building” — also known as the Super Power Building — that were leaked to us back in 2012, a year before the building formally opened. If you go look up those stories today at the Voice website, 13 years later, the images are long gone. But we managed to recover them and decided we’d find a place here at the Substack for them. They are still, to this day, the most complete rundown of what this building is like inside and out. This first story was originally published on January 9, 2012.
The Voice has obtained hundreds of new renderings of Scientology’s Super Power Building in Clearwater, Florida, as well as a comprehensive collection of its architectural drawings.
A few renderings of Scientology’s expensive new “mecca” were published as long ago as 2007, but that release, and a few since, have included only a few images of how the building’s interiors will look once it is finished.
This new leak of material to the Voice is much more comprehensive, and includes detailed information down to the building’s fasteners, fixtures, and signage, not to mention its major architectural schematics.
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard devised the “Super Power Rundown” in 1978. He envisioned it as a series of counseling routines, some of which would be used to enhance the human senses with the use of elaborate and futuristic platforms and machines. Hubbard died in 1986, and it wasn’t until the early 1990s that the rundown was performed on a few wealthy donors at Scientology’s secretive “Int Base” in the California desert. Then, in November 1998, Hubbard’s successor, church leader David Miscavige, broke ground on a massive new building project, “Flag Mecca,” known commonly as the Super Power Building, where the new rundown would be housed. Thirteen years and $145 million in fundraising later, the building is thought to be largely completed, but it is still not open for business. On the following pages you’ll get a detailed look at what’s inside...
Exteriors and Ground Floor
In November, the (formerly) St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) published a devastating expose about Scientology’s obsession with fundraising. The series, “The Money Machine,” appeared in four parts, and the final installment was about the Super Power Building and what a cash cow it has been since Miscavige broke ground.
After the 1998 start, the exterior of the building went up, then construction halted in 2003. But St. Pete Times journalists Tom Tobin and Joe Childs revealed that fundraising for it never stopped.
Construction started again in 2009, but this year, the city of Clearwater hit Scientology with a fine of $413,500 for overruns and delays. It’s believed that the building’s interiors, designed by the Atlanta firm Gensler, are largely finished. When Tobin and Childs asked the church in November when the building might finally be opened, spokeswoman Karin Pouw replied, “Soon.”
As we mentioned before, several renderings have been released in the press of Gensler’s designs for the building’s interiors, including some that show the fifth floor’s futuristic “Perceptics” installations — about which we’ll have much more later in this story.
The files leaked to the Voice include those renderings and many more, as well as hundreds of architectural drawings that go into minute detail. For the most part, we’re using those schematics to help us describe the facility, and we’re not going to release drawings whole — we’re not going to open ourselves up to the claim that we’re creating a security problem for an already paranoid organization.
However, we do want to provide some limited glimpses at that material — call it fair use. For example, if you go into the building at its grand entrance on its northwest corner, then hook a left around the reception desk to a door that pulls open toward you, then make another left, you’ll find yourself at the door to the Commodore’s Office.
Every Scientology “org” is supposed to create an office for Hubbard, even 26 years after his death, in case the “old man” suddenly returns. Here’s what his office looks like on one of the architectural drawings, just one small room in a city-block sized building...
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Scientology: Secrets of the Super Power Building
One of our very favorite series of articles that we did at the Village Voice were based on renderings and architectural drawings of Scientology’s “Flag Building” — also known as the Super Power Building — that were leaked to us back in 2012, a year before the building formally opened.
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