VIDEO: Scientology begs for staff in Chicago as it prepares to go ‘ideal’ — as soon as Saturday?

[Karen#1]

TONY ORTEGA
Excerpt:

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This weekend, Mike Rinder suggested at his blog that recent chatter coming out of Chicago may indicate that Scientology’s “Ideal Org” there may be having its grand opening as soon as this Saturday.

This is a pretty big deal, because David Miscavige’s program for opening new Scientology cathedrals has been on hold since its last grand opening in Ventura, California in February 2020.

The pandemic shut down public gatherings for more than a year, of course, but that hasn’t explained why Miscavige hasn’t resumed the events more recently. And especially with new facilities in Chicago and Austin sitting ready to go.

Miscavige started his grand project of replacing existing “orgs” in major cities with grander “Ideal Orgs” in 2003 in places like Buffalo and Tampa. He now has more than 60 gleaming (and empty) palaces in locations from Phoenix to Tokyo. And we’ve shown you church fliers indicating that he wants many more buildings across the country, in places like Hawaii, Long Island, Battle Creek, and New Haven.

Each of them can cost tens of millions of dollars, which is put on local Scientologists to raise. But with membership dwindling, we’re seeing more and more evidence that Miscavige is using grants from the IAS (Scientology’s membership organization) to fund the projects.

Since the pandemic began to recede, a couple of other factors may have been delaying the program. First, Miscavige himself, who likes to attend the grand openings, has been dodging process servers for a few different lawsuits, and he may be wary about showing up in such public places.

But also, we suspect that what’s been an issue with the new cathedrals is finding the people to staff them. When Ideal Orgs first open, they are under pressure to show a lot of initial success before, inevitably, they settle back into quietude. And as part of that initial push, they are supposed to be fully staffed. But who wants to join org staff these days?

One of our researchers noticed that the effort to draw Scientologists to Chicago to work for pennies at its new Ideal Org has been pretty involved. There’s a website, and several videos, and we wanted to show you that today.

We want to get your thoughts on the video, above, that features Jessica talking about her decision, as a second-generation Scientologist, to join Chicago staff.

And we wanted to show you just a few pages from the website that was put in place about three months ago. You tell us, would this get you to move to the Windy City to work for Dave?

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Please note that the photos here show these Chicago staffers at the Flag Building in Clearwater, Florida, where they are getting special training before the Ideal Org opens.

You too could get Flag certified to bring home the bacon! What are you waiting for!

Chicago peeps: Please keep an eye on the building at 650 S Clark St and let us know if you see preparations being made for a grand opening this weekend. Is there a big ribbon on the building? A space for an audience being roped off out in front?

Please let us know.





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[La La Lou Lou]

I hope they all use head and shoulders with those black jackets.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

i suspect the staff issue is that they're struggling with some new directive to recruit enough public and not end up relying on SO like they did partially in Orlando, and heavily in Columbus and Kansas City. plus on top of that unlike in Cali, scns are few and far between in the midwest so finding even temporary staffing to inflate numbers for for an opening is much harder, and everything is probably more a struggle due to the CoS' membership having shrunk that much more everywhere in the years after the last round of openings.

 

[onceuponatime]

I've heard they are majorly recruiting from the CW field for Chicago and this seems to back that up. I wonder how long they'll last.

 

[PirateAndBum]

"Young vibrant and highly trained staff make it the perfect place..." -- about 97.5% of the "look who joined staff" in Chicago promo I saw were senior citizens.

 

[Reyne Mayer]

"Young vibrant and highly trained staff make it the perfect place..." -- about 97.5% of the "look who joined staff" in Chicago promo I saw were senior citizens.

in Mike Rinder's Thursday Funnies today it was 1 young and 1 old, but in the past it's definitely skewed older.

and this looks to me like it shows a rather small number of really active members at the Chicago org -- though not skewing quite as heavily older as in other pictures of events like this (or have they just lost a lot of long time members in recent years?):

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

..

...and this looks to me like it shows a rather small number of really active members at the Chicago org -- though not skewing quite as heavily older as in other pictures of events like this (or have they just lost a lot of long time members in recent years?):

.
Jeez, somehow it doesn't seem like the Chicago Ideal Org is attracting enough people to "Clear" Cook County's 5.17M people.

Well, I'm probably wrong because the promo piece stated in writing that it was an "informative, fun and productive" meeting!

I still wonder what they mean when they say it was—productive. . .

...​

 

[Reyne Mayer]

doesn't look like they're going ideal that soon, any more than they were a couple of years ago.

today, posted at The Bunker a couple of hours ago. note that not only is the signage still covered up, but the street level is also still boarded up, which unless they get very busy tonight sure makes it look to me like no opening is happening this weekend:



here's a montage of their prior history of an apparent abortive opening at the site. it appears they put up the signage in spring of 2020 -- showing the sort of equipment that would probably be required to prepare for a ribbon yanking -- which in the past has been a sign of getting ready for an opening, and then they appeared to be read to open the building that fall, with neighbors reporting lots of comings and goings.

and then they, well, clammed back up, with the signs covered back up again and the street level boarded over in 2021, and then the plywood painted gray in 2022, by then looking pretty much exactly as it does in the picture taken and posted earlier today.



my guess all along is that the event scheduled for today, is as likely as not just more recruiting for staff — and maybe some last minute regging, even if the building looking so close to opening 2 years ago suggests to me they'd probably already bought all the overpriced furnishings from their slave labor shop out in California, too.

 

[onceuponatime]

doesn't look like they're going ideal that soon, any more than they were a couple of years ago.

today, posted at The Bunker a couple of hours ago. note that not only is the signage still covered up, but the street level is also still boarded up, which unless they get very busy tonight sure makes it look to me like no opening is happening this weekend:

View attachment 20396

here's a montage of their prior history of an apparent abortive opening at the site. it appears they put up the signage in spring of 2020 -- showing the sort of equipment that would probably be required to prepare for a ribbon yanking -- which in the past has been a sign of getting ready for an opening, and then they appeared to be read to open the building that fall, with neighbors reporting lots of comings and goings.

and then they, well, clammed back up, with the signs covered back up again and the street level boarded over in 2021, and then the plywood painted gray in 2022, by then looking pretty much exactly as it does in the picture taken and posted earlier today.

View attachment 20397

my guess all along is that the event scheduled for today, is as likely as not just more recruiting for staff — and maybe some last minute regging, even if the building looking so close to opening 2 years ago suggests to me they'd probably already bought all the overpriced furnishings from their slave labor shop out in California, too.

It's looking like a recruit event to me. Maybe there's some last minute regging but I'd guess the event is about recruiting. I'd mentioned that the Chicago team isn't close to being done with their exec training, I was always a bit doubtful about this being the opening because of that. But I also think they will resort to using SO execs at some point.

 

[ILove2Lurk]

"Our man has seen only three or four people go in there."
Tony Ortega

Source: Tony Ortega

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Reyne Mayer]

"Our man has seen only three or four people go in there."

Source: Tony Ortega

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i think their 'man' may have failed to take into account that when i check a map i find that the club backs up on a parking garage, which would seem likely to have a direct entrance...and that since the club also has 183 hotel rooms, probably must unless the 'man' saw a lot of people schlepping luggage in and out of the entrances they did think to check....

plus Chicago is famous for an old tunnel system, which may provide a way to enter from other adjacent buildings.

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

doesn't look like they're going ideal that soon, any more than they were a couple of years ago.

today, posted at The Bunker a couple of hours ago. note that not only is the signage still covered up, but the street level is also still boarded up, which unless they get very busy tonight sure makes it look to me like no opening is happening this weekend:

View attachment 20396

here's a montage of their prior history of an apparent abortive opening at the site. it appears they put up the signage in spring of 2020 -- showing the sort of equipment that would probably be required to prepare for a ribbon yanking -- which in the past has been a sign of getting ready for an opening, and then they appeared to be read to open the building that fall, with neighbors reporting lots of comings and goings.

and then they, well, clammed back up, with the signs covered back up again and the street level boarded over in 2021, and then the plywood painted gray in 2022, by then looking pretty much exactly as it does in the picture taken and posted earlier today.

View attachment 20397

my guess all along is that the event scheduled for today, is as likely as not just more recruiting for staff — and maybe some last minute regging, even if the building looking so close to opening 2 years ago suggests to me they'd probably already bought all the overpriced furnishings from their slave labor shop out in California, too.

.

Here's the Cliff Notes version. . .

Scientology's had 50 years of FAILURE in Chicago.

Now, in 2023, they are trying their third major re-launch with yet another new location and the the frightfully mistaken belief that:

• Their horrifically bad public relations track record will somehow vanish if they open a new center in another part of the city.
• They are somehow NOT selling snake oil that's never once worked.-and charging over a half million dollars for that fraudulent cure-all.
• A new lavishly expensive looking building will trick people into thinking that they must be very successful and that their dopey looking crew of Clears/OTs must (in fact) be delivering miracles to Scientology customers. Otherwise, Scientology's marks conclude there there is not way possible the org could have raised $20M - $30M to buy and remodel that property.

The new building, like everything else in Scientology, is a trick. A lie.

For many, many centuries expert con artists have used this gimmick and set up a wildly prosperous-looking "front" to make it appear that the business owners are phenomenally successful and rich. Little do Scientology's marks know that raising $25M in a donation racket to buy an "IDEAL" building is itself just another part of the cult's cruel hoax.

..

 

[The_Fixer]

Maybe some of us here would be willing to "assist" in promoting the org on the day?

We sure could have some fun "helping "...

Here, heh, heh....