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Yellow house rings up lots of green
As condos close in, a devout Scientologist drives a hard bargain, but her church has no hard feelings.
By ROBERT FARLEY
Published December 23, 2005
CLEARWATER - In this era of "House Sold for Insane Profit" stories, this one stands out.
Sure, the sales price is a zinger. Bought in 1992 for $76,000. Sold last month for $1-million.
But the story of this house sale has unique subplots: a hard-nosed negotiation between Scientologists and a big-time condo development shaking up the neighborhood.
And at the heart of it all is a woman with a deep emotional attachment to a charming place she dubbed The Little Yellow House - a home she hoped to have not just for this lifetime, but for eternity.
"Please capitalize the "T' in "The," Carisa Marion tells a reporter. "It's The Little Yellow House."
On paper - public documents at least - the sale is a head-scratcher.
The lot is 4,320 square feet, about a tenth of an acre. The Little Yellow House has two bedrooms, plus a one-bedroom guest cottage. The county property appraiser set market value at $141,200. Yet the Church of Scientology paid $1-million for it.
To a Scientologist.
That's right, Carisa Marion is a devout Scientologist.
The church wanted the property to one day expand its Sandcastle retreat across the street, where Scientology offers its highest levels of training.
So, did a Scientologist jack up her own church?
Not so fast. The sale has an important footnote: Marion immediately donated $500,000 back to the church, a prepayment for Scientology courses for herself and her two children.
Also driving up the price was location, location, location. The Little Yellow House has location in spades.
In the years after Marion bought the house, it became a residential oasis wedged between high-rise development projects. To the south, the Church of Scientology bought and renovated several properties. To the north and east, developers gobbled up the neighborhood for a massive condo and retail complex.
None of that pressure existed when Carisa Marion came across the little house in the early 1990s. She and her then-husband were on another of their visits from Atlanta to Scientology seminars at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater.
It stood out, she said, from the neighborhoods of character-less, concrete block ranch homes in Clearwater. The yellow house at 301 N Osceola Ave. was a classic 1930s Key West style bungalow, with hardwood floors and crown moldings. Marion instantly fell in love and bought it.
The following year, Marion and her husband moved to Clearwater, and into The Little Yellow House. Several years later, they moved to the tony Harbor Oaks neighborhood in Clearwater, but kept the old house as a rental. When Marion and her husband divorced, she moved back into it.
Then in 1997, Marion and her boyfriend, a dog chiropractor, moved to Northern California.
Meanwhile, just across the street, the Church of Scientology built a major addition to its Sandcastle retreat. Then, it bought and renovated the Osceola Inn, just one block from The Little Yellow House, and turned it into an upscale hotel for visiting Scientologists.
From California, Marion rented her house for $1,500 per month to Scientologists from around the world who stayed in Clearwater for months at a time to work on the high levels of training at the Sandcastle.
Immediately to the north, private sector developers moved in and soon drew a bead on The Little Yellow House.
Real estate speculator Gerald Ellenburg, also a Scientologist, approached Marion about buying her property. He had huge plans: Condos towers.
Marion, 44, had intended never to sell, especially because her yellow house is across the street from the Sandcastle.
"The church will be there for eternity," she said. "And I would've been across the street for eternity, too. My family will always be Scientologists."
After much pleading by Ellenburg's representatives, she finally relented when she saw the plans. "I was where the tennis courts were going to be," she said. Her price, $399,000. But Ellenburg's plans fell apart, and the house came back to Marion.
"It was traumatic," she said.
Two years ago, another development group headed by Scientologists approacher her with yet another major condo plan. This time, Marion was adamant.
"Please just accept my no, and believe me, it's a no. Please just go around me."
Triangle Development Co.'s Ben Kugler remembers flying to California and spending three hours in Marion's kitchen making a personal pitch. Triangle's property surrounded hers on three sides. The company plans two 15-story condo towers overlooking Clearwater Harbor to the west and upscale retail shops along Fort Harrison Avenue to the east. Triangle will build 325 condo units in all, many of which it expects to sell to Clearwater's growing community of Scientologists.
Marion supported the plan, but refused to sell.
"She had a personal attachment to it like you wouldn't believe," Kugler said.
Then last year, the Church of Scientology bought a piece of Triangle's land immediately south of Marion's home as a site to expand Sandcastle operations.
"They needed it," Kugler said. "If it was anyone else, we would probably not have done it."
Triangle sold its vacant property for a little more than $1.2-million.
"They didn't pay any more than it cost us," Kugler said. "It's my church. I'm not going to make a profit off them."
That's the difference, he said, between Triangle's sale to the church and Marion's.
Marion contacted a commercial appraiser who told her she held the key piece. The church needed it to put together a half-acre so it could build a 50,000- to 60,000-square-foot building.
When she set her price, Marion said, she simply came up with a number she could live with.
Clearwater real estate developer Lee Arnold, who has proposed his own plan for two condo/hotel towers just a block away, said Marion's $1-million price tag doesn't floor him.
Institutions like churches often pay top dollar for abutting land, he said. And prices for downtown Clearwater real estate are skyrocketing. Earlier this month, the Church of Scientology paid the county $530,000 for a a quarter-acre near the Police Department. The church already owns the rest of the block.
Besides, there was the $500,000 donation Marion made to the church: $300,000 for herself; and $100,000 each for her two children, ages 18 and 24.
"I bought a lot of sessions to cover me for the rest of my life," Marion said.
Marion is a "last life clear" Scientologist. That means she believes that in a previous life she was a Scientologist who attained Scientology's state of clear, at which one can "confront anything and everything in the past, present and future."
Marion now wants to take Scientology's OT level courses, the church's highest, and most expensive, training. The $300,000 will allow her to complete that training, she said.
"That was the biggest win for me," she said.
After taxes, sales fees and contributions to the church, Marion estimates she netted about $310,000 on her yellow house.
"I knew I was not ripping them off," she said.
The church has no hard feelings, a spokesman said.
"She drove a hard bargain," said Scientology's Ben Shaw. "When you're talking business, you hope a parishioner will help us to some degree, but it's a matter of business. She was in a position where there was a lot of development going on around her. I think we got a fair exchange out of it."
[Last modified December 23, 2005, 01:12:07]
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