How Scientology went from paying $1.4M for Clearwater road to nothing

How did the city go from a sale agreement to giving the road away for free?

Tampa Bay Tribune/July 15, 2026

By Colbi Edmonds

More than a year ago, the Clearwater City Council gave its initial approval to sell part of a public street downtown to the Church of Scientology. The city stood to make $1.38 million for a little more than a half-acre of land.

It should have been a straightforward transaction, the sort the city has executed before. It was anything but.

For one, it involved the church — whose affiliates have purchased more than 200 properties downtown — sparking protest from residents, who rallied with an alternative proposal. And the street is in Clearwater’s downtown core.

But the most unusual, and consequential, factor in the debate was state Attorney General James Uthmeier, who intervened not once but twice.

By following Uthmeier’s counsel in a divided vote last month, the city not only gave up the land, it did so without getting paid for what has been considered public property for decades.

“In my mind, we walked away with nothing,” said Council member Lina Teixeira, who voted against giving away the street every time it was brought to the dais.

Here’s what we know about the circumstances that led Clearwater to cede downtown land.

Scientology makes a request

Private entities can ask local governments to give up ownership of streets, rights-of-way and alleys. They are called requests to vacate and are sought to clear the way for redevelopment or if someone can show the property no longer meets a public need.

In the past 10 years, the City Council has approved at least nine requests from private entities, including the Church of Scientology. After a voter-approved city amendment in 2016, Clearwater’s charter required the city to receive at least fair market value when giving a right-of-way to an abutting property owner.

During recent meetings, members of the City Council have said the city has never denied a request for a public right-of-way.

But South Garden Avenue comes with other considerations. It has revenue-generating public parking spaces and is in a redevelopment area, which is a special district where public money is used to address blight.

Scientology, which has its international spiritual headquarters in downtown Clearwater, said it needs the roadway for a long-planned event hall named after its founder, L. Ron Hubbard.

Under terms initially approved in March 2025, the church agreed to pay $1.38 million to the city for the roadway. The church had until 2029 to substantially complete the project. If it wasn’t done by then, it would have had to pay $300,000 to the city to extend the terms every year until the contract expired in 2033. It was also required to convert most of the roadway into green space.

Those conditions became obsolete after the church withdrew its initial application in the face of public opposition. But the deliberations had caught Uthmeier’s attention.

Uthmeier takes note of Clearwater debate

Last year, residents urged the city to retain its ownership of the road or support an alternative proposal to create a memorial to the city’s African American history.

In private meetings, the church showed the city its plans for activating other vacant properties downtown. In public, some council members said they wanted more explicit provisions that the city would benefit.

“If we’re going to help them develop their building by closing the street, we need to have something in it in return for the city,” Mayor Bruce Rector said during a March 17 meeting last year. “A simple purchase price, for me, is just not enough.”

In May 2025, Uthmeier sent a letter to Rector about the Garden Avenue plot. He warned against “discriminatory motives” toward the applicant, although his letter did not include the word “Scientology.”

He also warned that attaching conditions to the sale of the roadway would violate a 1978 attorney general opinion, which says cities can’t interfere with the property rights of landowners who abut a public street. He did acknowledge that the city had to ask for fair market value for such requests.

Last May, the church withdrew its application for South Garden Avenue. It resubmitted an application in April of this year.

After it withdrew its initial request, a lawyer from the church asserted that his client owned the street — not the city — and therefore could ask for it without paying anything. The council directed the former city attorney to write a memorandum on who owns the street.

In an opinion from July 2025, former City Attorney David Margolis said the city owned the street and had the right to attach conditions to the sale. He included a timeline outlining the roadway’s ownership dating to 1891.

In 1922, he said, the city approved a map for Court Square that closed a portion of South Garden Avenue south of Franklin Street. The city then moved a portion of South Garden Avenue west, which is where it lies currently.

“If the City constructed this portion of Garden Avenue, then the City perfected its title decades before the Church of Scientology acquired any parcel shown,” he wrote of the map.

Regardless of that, he wrote, the city owns the street through statutory dedication.

Under statutory dedication, there are two ways a city can receive title to a road. One way is if the city maintains a road that a nongovernmental entity built for at least seven years. The other is for the city to build a road and maintain it for at least four years, which applies to South Garden Avenue, according to Margolis’ opinion.

Uthmeier weighs in again, this time by invite

After Margolis’ memorandum, neither the city nor church took official action.

But Council member David Allbritton, without telling the council or Margolis, sent a letter in November asking the attorney general for an opinion on who owns the street. Normally, a full council would vote to request an attorney general opinion.

Uthmeier responded to Allbritton within a couple of weeks, saying the church “most likely owns” the land under the portion of South Garden Avenue in question and could ask for it for free. On at least two previous occasions when the council has collectively agreed to request an opinion from the attorney general, it has taken months to receive a response.

In Uthmeier’s answer to Allbritton, he disagreed that the city received South Garden Avenue through statutory dedication. He argued, similarly to the church, that the city received it through common law, which does not change the ownership of the land — it just allows it to be used for the public.

Margolis tendered his resignation less than two weeks later. His resignation letter did not include a specific reason as to why he was leaving. He declined to comment for this story.

Jeremy Redfern, deputy chief of staff for Uthmeier, did not answer a question about how Uthmeier first became aware of the discussions surrounding South Garden Avenue.

“Since becoming AG in early 2025, James has been very aggressive in issuing legal opinions where he sees fit to combat injustices, correct legal errors, and stand up for churches, synagogues, private schools, and organizations facing local government abuses or discriminatory animus,” Redfern wrote in an emailed response to the Tampa Bay Times.

Rector has said the church lobbied the state Attorney General’s Office for the letter, which Uthmeier said “would be offensive if it wasn’t laughable” in the footnotes of his letter to Allbritton.

The Times reported in November that a top donor to the church has also donated millions of dollars in recent elections to Republican candidates and efforts — including nearly $2 million to political committees that fought ballot initiatives the governor opposed.

Uthmeier led one of those committees while he was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff. There is no indication Uthmeier weighed in on Garden Avenue because of the donations.

At the time, an attorney for the church said it does not direct or get involved with parishoners’ political activities.

Allbritton said during a City Council meeting that he met with the church before writing the letter to Uthmeier, but that the church did not ask him to.

He attended an Island Estates Civic Association meeting in November a few days before he sent the letter. City Manager Jennifer Poirrier and Assistant City Manager Alfred Battle were present, according to a recording posted on Facebook. During the meeting, he said “what we’re asking” is the state attorney general to tell the city what it can do.

Poirrier said she did know about the letter but did not tell Margolis about it because Allbritton asked her not to. She also couldn’t tell the other council members, she said, because of Florida’s Sunshine Law, which prohibits elected officials from discussing public matters behind closed doors.

Allbritton did not respond to two emails or a voicemail seeking comment for this story. At the time he sent the letter, he said there was nothing nefarious about him asking for Uthmeier’s opinion. He recently told the Wall Street Journal that the church raised the idea of involving Uthmeier.

A representative from the church asked for a copy of Allbritton’s letter from the clerk’s department the Monday after he sent it, according to the city clerk.

The Times asked a spokesperson for the church about the meeting with Allbritton, including who initiated the conversation and what was discussed. The Times also asked whether the church knew Allbritton was planning on sending the letter and whether it asked him to send it.

Sarah Heller, the spokesperson, did not answer those questions but said “the Church is pleased that the matter has finally been resolved after extensive public review and discussion.”

“The Council’s decision allows the long-planned L. Ron Hubbard Hall project to move forward and provides the permanent safety buffer sought for many years between major religious and community gatherings and public vehicular traffic,” Heller said.

A lingering question over who owns the land

At a June 18 meeting, the council approved giving away the roadway without a purchase and sale agreement.

“I don’t necessarily know that it’s a missed opportunity,” Vice Mayor Ryan Cotton said. “It’s just new information has come down the pipe from somebody that I would say carries a bigger stick legally.”

There are still performance conditions attached to the request the city approved last month. The church has to abide by a construction timeframe, cover the cost of relocating utilities and pay a fee for the parking that is getting removed. The church has asked for six years to complete the project.

The road also won’t close immediately. The church will need a right-of-way permit, which the city isn’t required to provide until it has issued building permits for the project.

“The money isnttop priority, it is getting this decision legally correct and most important to me is the contractual performance conditions more so than the money,” Council member Mike Mannino wrote in a text message to the Times.

Clearwater residents and leaders have thoroughly dissected the details surrounding South Garden Avenue. While opposing council members acknowledge they’ve never turned down such a land transfer, they said this one demanded more examination.

“Different facts warrant different scrutiny,” Teixeira said during the June 18 meeting. “That’s not prejudice. That’s due diligence.”

When it came to a final vote last month, roughly 2,000 people showed up — mostly Scientologists. Council members voted the same way they did at the beginning: Rector and Teixeira opposed, and Allbritton, Cotton and Mannino in favor.

“I’m not going to challenge the AG’s opinion,” Mannino said during last month’s meeting. “I have no interest in that.”

Rector last month questioned whether Uthmeier’s opinion truly answered the question of who owns the road. Either way, taxpayers are no longer receiving the money initially offered for it.

“Did we fight hard enough for the public?” Rector said. “That question’s going to be out there forever.”