Clearwater Council Sets Sept. 17 Vote on Handing Two Downtown Streets to Scientology-Backed Complex

Clearwater's City Council will decide on Sept. 17 whether to give up control of portions of two downtown streets, an alleyway and a city-owned parcel appraised at $875,000, clearing the way for a roughly 80,000-square-foot entertainment center backed by the Church of Scientology. The meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the Clearwater Main Library downtown, and unlike a work session, the public can speak on the item.

The applicant is the Cleveland Street Alliance, a limited liability company the church runs with parishioners and development professionals. The Alliance announced the roughly $50 million project in April, along with plans to bring Texas-based EVO Entertainment downtown, before the council knew about it or had approved the street closures the church says the project requires. Backers have promoted it as having the largest cinema screen in the world, alongside an arcade, bowling and laser tag.

What the city would give up

• Portions of Laura Street
• Portions of Grove Street
• An alleyway
• A city-owned parcel at 103 N. East Ave., appraised at $875,000

The East Avenue parcel adds a second step. The city has already moved it to the Community Redevelopment Agency, which redirects tax dollars inside a designated district to address blight. The council, sitting as the redevelopment agency, would have to approve the sale separately. That board's next meeting is Sept. 28.

City Manager Jennifer Poirrier has described the CRA transfer as standard practice that gives the city more flexibility in how a property gets developed, pointing to the same approach used with the historic National Guard Armory in North Greenwood. Poirrier also said she met with church leader David Miscavige a couple of weeks ago and passed along a specific council concern: if Laura Street closes, downtown loses an east-west route. She said the church is working up options.

A fight over the calendar

Getting the item onto Sept. 17 was itself contested. Council member Lina Teixeira had asked, publicly and privately since July, that staff move significant agenda items off the week of Sept. 14 because she is caring for her mother and has a scheduling conflict. She said the city has granted that courtesy before, and that she was angry less about the answer than about not getting one from her colleagues. She called the inconsistency blatant.

The council instead approved a compromise last week: keep the vote on Sept. 17 and cancel the Sept. 14 work session, since Mayor Bruce Rector is also out of town that day. That means no presentation-only session this time. The discussion, the public comment and the vote all happen in one night.

Council member Mike Mannino argued against pushing the item a month, comparing it to a baseball team delaying spring training and showing up unprepared.

This follows June's 3-2 vote on Garden Avenue

In June, the council voted 3-2 to vacate one block of South Garden Avenue next to the church's Flag Service Organization, the site of the planned L. Ron Hubbard Hall. David Allbritton, Ryan Cotton and Mannino voted yes. Teixeira and Rector voted no. Rector said no public purpose was served by closing the street and that a court should sort out who actually owns it.

An earlier version of that deal, approved in March, would have paid the city $1.3 million. It was scrapped after Florida's attorney general took the position that the church already owned the land and owed nothing for it.

The church's legal director for the Flag Service Organization has described the Garden Avenue segment as a landlocked sliver ringed on all four sides by roughly 15 acres of church and parishioner property, and said it has never functioned as a through street. She said ground has been broken on L. Ron Hubbard Hall and demolition is underway. That project is described as $250 million and 286,000 square feet, with an auditorium and public plaza. Under the June approval, the church has six years to open it.

The petition deadline lands the day before

The resident group Save the Garden is trying to undo the June vote by referendum. It needs more than 7,000 valid signatures from registered Clearwater voters by Sept. 16. As of Aug. 9 the group had collected over 3,500. If it qualifies, the council must reconsider the street transfer, and if members do not reverse themselves, the question could go to a special election.

The group also wants voter approval required before the city hands over any downtown right-of-way in the future, and has proposed a memorial garden and heritage trail on the Garden Avenue block, which was a Black-owned business district from the 1880s into the mid-20th century. In May, the ACLU of Florida sued the city in Pinellas County circuit court on the group's behalf, alleging Clearwater threw out thousands of valid signatures from an earlier petition drive of more than 8,000 without explaining why.

Date	What happens
Sept. 16	Save the Garden petition deadline
Sept. 17	Council vote, 6 p.m., Main Library
Sept. 28	CRA board on the East Ave. parcel

The church, its parishioners and affiliated entities own an estimated 200 properties in downtown Clearwater, many of them vacant. Whether the East Avenue parcel actually changes hands will not be settled on Sept. 17, even if the street requests pass. That decision waits until Sept. 28.

We'll be following both meetings. For more on how these votes reshape downtown, see our ongoing government and politics coverage and our business development stories at Pinellas County Community Website. Follow us on Facebook for updates as the Sept. 17 agenda is posted, and join the conversation in our Community Forum if you plan to speak at the meeting.

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Header photo: Ebyabe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)