Can't Tell If This Is Good Or Bad (Detroit: jobs, business)

[Cliffie]

Scientologists heading downtown

Saw this in the news this week...New MI HQ for the Scientologists going up in Detroit...is this going to stimulate business, or attract movie stars to the area, or just take advantage of scared people?

[GonnaBeAYooper]

Another waste of the taxpayers money. They're going to Detroit to party.

[Coldjensens]

It is the latter I am afraid. generally they just take up otherwise useful space.

[STLCardsBlues1989]

I wouldn't be too excited about it. Other than with celebrities, scientology isn't very popular. For some reason celebrities are crazy enough to believe that an alien blew up a bunch of other aliens that we now have to get out of us.

[sugarbeet]

Well, you've got 125 employees working downtown. They'll go to the restaurants, bars, shops and some may live downtown. Anything that gets more bodies and wallets into Detroit is a good thing.

[Coldjensens]

I do not think that it will have much impact. They opened a headquarters in Santa Ana Ca where we used to live. it was touted as bringing more spending to the city and therefore more jobs. It did not happen. They eat inside the building. In fact they feed prospective initiates inside the building. The only difference we saw was added parking problems and Scientologists out on the streets bugging people to come to their seminars. I don't think that there are any tax benefits since they call themselves a church, I don't think that they pay any taxes.

Basically, they will probably have no impact good or bad, unless you want a free lunch.