Salt Lake City: Huge Church Project Renews Downtown, and Debate

[Lunican]

SALT LAKE CITY â€" For many devout Mormons, Utah’s capital city is important mainly as a setting for the jewel that really matters: Temple Square at the city’s center. Brigham Young, the pioneer leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, laid out the urban grid with street numbers starting at the temple. The secular world was thus defined by the sacred core.

But now a hugely ambitious, $1 billion church-financed redevelopment project near the temple, called City Creek Center, and a wave of recent church property purchases in the vicinity are prompting a new debate inside the church community and out over where the line between culture and economics should be drawn.

Some residents say the church, by opening its checkbook in a recession, rescued the city when times got tough. The 1,800 construction jobs at City Creek alone have provided a big local economic cushion. Completion of the project â€" 20 acres of retail shops and residential towers â€" is scheduled for 2012.

Full Article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/us/08saltlake.html

[thelakelander]

No suprise that this thing is being built around Salt Lake City's LRT line.



in 20 years, if we can find a way to lose 200,000 people, perhaps we can follow Salt Lake City's path of economically revitalizing their urban core with reliable mass transit.

[reednavy]

FBC, wanna help?

Oh that's right, cult, nevermind.

[fsujax]

a cult? are you serious? even if FBC did propose something like this....there would be negativity towards it.

[reednavy]

a cult? are you serious? even if FBC did propose something like this....there would be negativity towards it.

Um, it was a joke.

However, with the current admin and staff they have, I wouldn't dare trust them at all.