Luxury and privacy in a setting of great natural beauty
Tom Cruise has put his spectacular Telluride estate on the market for $39.5 million. The stunning 320-acre Colorado property features a 10,000 square foot main residence with all the amenities any buyer could want.
Cruise’s Telluride estate is the perfect weekend getaway for any billionaire
Cruise, 58, has been selling his homes in recent years. He sold his Beverly Hills mansion in 2016 for a reported $40 million. The actor sold his hilltop home in LA’s Laurel Canyon in 2015 for $11.4 million. The actor had earlier sold his homes in England and New York City.
The Skyview in Clearwater a/k/a “that building Tom Cruise lives in”
Tom Cruise owns the two-story penthouse in The Skyview, a luxury 10-story condo building in downtown Clearwater, Florida. Developed by wealthy Scientology developer Moises Agami, the project features a private nine-car garage for the actor.
The Skyview is home to several other wealthy Scientologists and is a short walk to Scientology’s Flag Building, a sprawling edifice which was called the “Super Power Building” during the 17 years the Church spent raising $145 million to build the strange and hulking facility which covers an entire city block.
For many years, the Super Power Building sat half-finished rotting under the hot Florida sun. Construction began in 1998 and stopped from 2006 to 2011. The Super Power Building sat surrounded by a chain link fence and looked like a derelict garbage pile:
2010: The garbage-strewn and half-finished construction site for the Flag Building sat in this deplorable condition from 2006-2011. Scientology made various excuses for the delays. The real reason was that Scientology wanted to keep raising money on the building for as long as possible. We critics called the Super Power Building the “most profitable empty building in the world” and it was. Construction costs were about $100 million and Scientology raised $145 million for the project. The extra money was likely banked in a dedicated building account to conform to IRS rules.
The City of Clearwater imposed daily fines on Scientology for failing to complete construction and leaving this eyesore to blight Clearwater. By 2011 the fines totaled a whopping $450,000. Scientology appealed the fine and paid $413,500. Of course, Scientology bitched about how unfair it was. The building was finally opened in November 2017 and renamed the Flag Building.
The Flag Building features strange cultic appliances including an oiliness table where Scientologists experience one of the 57 “sense perceptics” which L. Ron Hubbard says people possess. Among other goals, the Super Power Rundown is intended to rehabilitate a person’s dormant 57 perceptics.
The Scientology Oiliness Table: Does your religion have one? If not, why not?
Drowned in an overwrought and incoherent tsunami of travertine marble, the lobby of the Flag Building reminds us of a cavernous subway station in space:
The unspeakable architectural horror that is the lobby of Scientology’s Flag Building. This monstrosity is to cathedrals what Battlefield Earth is to movies. The place looks like it was designed to be a government palace in North Korea.
Why did Tom Cruise downsize and move into 10-story condo building? Perhaps he did so as it will allow him to stay in top physical condition by scaling the building each evening to his penthouse after a hard day spent auditing and yelling at ashtrays in Scientology’s Flag Building:
Categories: The Scientology Money Project
That is such beautiful property, I find it odd that he’s selling all his homes and has decided to live in Clearwater full time. I hope a big part of the proceeds do not go into the pocket of the cult, but I’m sure it will.
He has no young children to consider, so no worries, eh Tom?
You just do whatever Davy M tells you to do.
any idea what the ‘oiliness table’ does or how it works? that’s quite a contraption.
I sent an email to the listing agent requesting confirmation that it’s been cleansed of any residual space cooties, let’s hope he replies.
If my research is right (public records), a lot of the Cardone Capital properties are owned or were, at the time of the initial acquisition by Cardone, owned in part by a variety of Los Angeles-based insurance companies. These are companies that wouldn’t be known by members of the general public (Allstate, State Farm, heck even TIAA for that matter). Perhaps they were formed for the purpose of insuring high risk movies, or insuring regular movies and performers. It’s possible Cruise is moving money into these companies, perhaps for the purpose of paying down some of Cardone’s debt. It’s also possible that Cruise might be short money, given his recent highly publicized tirade. I think he mentions insurers in it. Finally, there’s just a chance that he doesn’t want to be in real estate, or is moving it into a secretive LLC for the purposes of acquiring property in another name, or something I didn’t think up, like drumming up publicity. But I thought the insurance company angle was worth mentioning.
Interesting observations Bob. Can you please e-mail us the names of the previous owners of Cardone’s properties? Send to jeffreyaugustine@gmail.com
We already know Grant buys properties himself and then flips them to his funds. He pockets money in flipping to funds he owns and controls. The funds are funded by money Cardone’s Reg A and Reg D investors.
Where does the initial money come from when Cardone purchases properties as an individual? Who is going to finance a flip? This is where Cardone’s money pipeline gets very interesting to research.
Regrettably (or perhaps not), the research was lost, as far as I’m aware. I’d recommend taking a copy of Grant’s book on Real Estate “Real Estate Investing Made Simple,” (spoiler alert: take out lots of debt you don’t need, and only buy highly sought after trophy properties, regardless of price because it will always go up in price at a precipitous rate, because Donald Trump and the Government or something like that) and turning to the back where the properties are. The ones that are particularly interesting are the earlier ones (2012, ’13, maybe ’14 time frame if I recall correctly – ignore any of the California properties). This was before he became known outside of the Sci Watcher community and, I guess, some boneheaded corporate sales teams. You should find the addresses of the companies there. Of course, you can always go down to the public records office and request them, but I believe that commercial services like West and Lexis allow users to perform these searches for a cost. Law firms or title companies may have a subscription if anyone wants to run one of these searches (if allowed). There’s one last place I might have these records, and I’ll take a look to see if they’re there, but for me, one look at this was enough to say, “hell no” to investing with Cardone Capital. It seemed like Hacienda Gardens were going to start popping up all over the place, if things went a certain way.
I should also add that the earlier investments appeared to be less leveraged than the current ones, suggesting that select insiders and perhaps family are given preferential access within the firm’s investment structure. If correct, this could mean that the later purchases were largely vanity plays, with the misguided, likely naive investor being led to invest money into something that Grant or those he actually cared about are not substantially invested in.
Ah yes, here they are, my notes in the back of “How to Create Wealth Investing In Real Estate”- the word “cash” seems to be everywhere in them. “Harbour Palms” (St. Lucie, Fl) is tied to the Sunset Plaza Insurance Co, and “Harbour Cay South” (Stuart, Fl) is tied to Souther Associates LLC of 9229 W. Sunset Blvd. I wish I had more, but that was more than enough for me to say “no” and remember my reasons. I think the later projects became more opaque with titles like Cardone Equity Fund III or something like that listed on the deeds and/or mortgages.