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Six years ago, City Creek Mall opened in downtown SLC, directly across South Temple from Temple Square, the Lion House, and other LDS Church administration buildings. It got a lot of attention from this site among others. It looks like the Church is following the same model, on a greatly reduced scale near the Mesa AZ Temple:
Currently, the Temple is closed for renovation with an open house to be sometime in 2020 for the re-opening. The announcement above indicates the new project will open around the same time or shortly after. Part of the whole effort is a brand new Temple Visitors Center, which will probably be finished around the same time.
That’s the news… But let me also provide some thoughts.
I get that there will be a wide variety of opinion on this matter. City Creek was a major sore-point for a lot of folks here. In retrospect, I think City Creek achieved the desired results and probably was a solid investment as well. Downtown SLC is much improved, and since the area contains the signature Church showcase, I don’t think it was a bad idea.
The Mesa AZ Temple has lived in an out-of-the-way, quiet, pleasant, though maybe a bit out-of-date area for most of its life, but Phoenix-Metro is booming right now. I guess I don’t find anything wrong with a real-estate development investment that is so close to the Temple, ensuring that the Temple and its visitors center can be more visible and interesting to a growing community.
I don’t know if the Church was involved in some of the Ogden revitalization or not, but it is pretty cool that the Ogden Temple, whose neighborhood had really fallen off, is now situated adjacent to some really nice retail space to the south.
The Boise temple is within walking distance (though on the other side of the freeway) from the happening Boise Spectrum Area.
Downtown Provo, especially in close proximity to the Provo City Center Temple, has really changed since the Tabernacle Fire.
Even if Ogden, Boise, and Provo development happened without funding assistance from the Church, these have had positive effects on the visibility of these Temples.
I’m sure the Church is seeing this and looking for opportunities, such as in Mesa, to encourage development near its temples, including providing some investments of its own when necessary.
Thanks On Own. I have to process this one. As you point out the face lifts do revitalize a community. And as a secular church, this kind of makes sense. The problem I see, is that we can’t determine if we are a secular church or not. One minute “We are the Army of God and all things Holy.” Then we are “Building up the Kingdom by developing real estate.”
My wish has been and remains that we create interfaith centers instead of Malls. Places with halls for worship, study, meetings, research. But like most things that I want, no one calls to ask.
I wouldn’t call the area around the Mesa temple merely an “out-of-the-way, quiet, pleasant, though maybe a bit out-of-date area.” Maybe a decade ago my sister was chased by a homeless guy wielding a knife when she parked nearby to go to the temple. It’s, IMO, a pretty sketchy area, very run-down for Phoenix. Then again, I might be inclined to say that of Mesa at large. I do know that the development around the Ogden mall has been done through investment by the church. The area there was really in decline. There was a strip mall that had vacant storefronts and was beginning to attract a criminal element. The church renovated the temple, bought the strip mall, and tore it down to build stylish condominiums.
It seemed like a win-win for everybody.
The Church does use all the marketing tricks in the book, to try and spread the gospel. I don’t think I can judge the Church too hard, though. It’s an investment, it creates jobs and financial security. I don’t think I’d do much different, if I was in charge of spending the funds of a religious organization. At worst, I think it’s a gray area. It’s certainly not the worst expenditure the Church has made (looking at Brigham Young).I’d rather have them be financially transparent, than judging too hard on how exactly they spend the funds. I’m going to draw on my last 5 years in non-profits, including my own that I started. The second you start acting like a business person, discussing profit, investment in assets, you alienate 3/4 of the people who know about it. These include the people in your organization, donors, and the public. So, the church needs to deal with that. As a millionaire I once interviewed said (he was a Stake President at the time), “the church and business don’t mix well”. If you want to behave like a business, expect a certain percent of your “followership” will check out and stop donating.
I started a farmer’s market 3 years ago. We made $250 on our first one. That was insufficient due to all the work involved so I worked with (shall we say “opposed”) local government and worked with the non-profit I started there at the time to increase our profitability. This language and business orientation alienated everyone but the people who had business experience. Even though 100% of our money went to charitable causes, our organization was a legal not-for-profit with laws prohibiting distribution of proceeds to officers and members, the government said it was unconscionable that a business would be allowed to conduct operations on public land. The people on our Board thought I was out for personal gain because I was always talking about making a profit. And this was even though, in my mind, I was simply raising money to beautify local assets.
I’m in the “am checking out” camp for the time being. The church demands quite a bit of money and effort if you are to be in good standing. To then have so many naked business interests bothers me. Taken with the fact they are never there for me on mission-critical issues I can’t solve on my own (non-financial) and tend to treat their volunteers like dirt, initiatives like City Creek bother me. I hear more about the church’s real estate investments than I do about their charitable donations to ease the suffering of poor and needy. And the fact that “no tithing funds were used” doesn’t help. If they are making decent money on these business interests, that money should be funneled back to the Wards and into Social Service programs. So when people like me have depression or coping issues with their church experience, you get a trained counselor to help you through it.
So for the time being, I’m out when it comes to putting my personal funds toward church coffers. Mine goes to truly charitable causes where I pay for visible improvements to our public assets that would otherwise be neglected in my home town and near where I live. And then I feel like a true philanthropist, not someone paying membership dues, or “on the back foot”.
SilentDawning wrote:
I hear more about the church’s real estate investments than I do about their charitable donations to ease the suffering of poor and needy. And that bothers me.
This is the fourfold mission of the church:
1) Perfect the Saints
2) Proclaim the Gospel
3) Redeem the Dead
4) Care for the Poor and Needy
At what point do investments and business activities cease to be something that finances the fourfold mission of the church and start to become a mission of the church unto themselves?
5) Run for profit businesses and invest capital
If we stuck to the fourfold mission of the church, what percentage of assets would we estimate go toward each mission?
1) Perfect the Saints – the infrastructure and overall governance/daily operations of the church. Probably a big chunk of change.
2) Proclaim the Gospel – missionary work. Materials cost, travel cost, but a large portion of the bill footed by the members paying for missions
3) Redeem the Dead – temples. Probably a big chunk of change.
4) Care for the Poor and Needy – 40 million a year? Who knows?
This goes back to mom3’s lament that the 4th mission of the church has struggled to take off in the hearts and minds of the saints. Want it to take off? FUND IT. And this is a criticism of the criticism that the church’s mission isn’t providing humanitarian aid. If it isn’t, we should go back to (or as the case may be, remain at) the threefold mission.
nibbler wrote:
SilentDawning wrote:
I hear more about the church’s real estate investments than I do about their charitable donations to ease the suffering of poor and needy. And that bothers me.
This is the fourfold mission of the church:
1) Perfect the Saints
2) Proclaim the Gospel
3) Redeem the Dead
4) Care for the Poor and Needy
At what point do investments and business activities cease to be something that finances the fourfold mission of the church and start to become a mission of the church unto themselves?
5) Run for profit businesses and invest capital
If we stuck to the fourfold mission of the church, what percentage of assets would we estimate go toward each mission?
1) Perfect the Saints – the infrastructure and overall governance/daily operations of the church. Probably a big chunk of change.
2) Proclaim the Gospel – missionary work. Materials cost, travel cost, but a large portion of the bill footed by the members paying for missions
3) Redeem the Dead – temples. Probably a big chunk of change.
4) Care for the Poor and Needy – 40 million a year? Who knows?
This goes back to mom3’s lament that the 4th mission of the church has struggled to take off in the hearts and minds of the saints. Want it to take off? FUND IT. And this is a criticism of the criticism that the church’s mission isn’t providing humanitarian aid. If it isn’t, we should go back to (or as the case may be, remain at) the threefold mission.
There was an book called Mormon America where a journalist did some really great research. He found the LDS church gives about 1/2 of the amount of humanitarian aid that a church of equivalent size, the Lutheran Church does in America.
Quote:There was an book called Mormon America where a journalist did some really great research. He found the LDS church gives about 1/2 of the amount of humanitarian aid that a church of equivalent size, the Lutheran Church does in America.
I did some simple research of my own when that charge was made initially, and it was obvious that the LDS Church actually gave FAR more than the Lutheran Church in charitable donations, when all valid charitable contributions were included. I actually looked up the Lutheran Church’s financial statement, calculated what they gave by category, and compared it to the author’s assertions and a VERY conservative estimate of contributions the LDS Church made that weren’t included.
The conclusion was TERRIBLY flawed. It focused ONLY on cash donations and excluded ALL of the LDS Church’s non-cash donations and contributions, including millions of dollars in disaster relief of direct supplies. It completely ignored the fact that the LDS Church gives cash donations in certain situations but prefers to give non-cash assistance – since that sort of assistance almost always is more efficient and can be applied more widely. Also, the author’s figures did not include ANY fast offering funds. Not one penny of the huge amount given in fast offering assistance above what is donated by the membership.
This is one of those twisted-stat charges that I loathe. It simply isn’t true – and it had to have been intentional, since the “research” was constructed in the most damning way possible. It literally ignored EVERYTHING that would have reflected positively and comprehensively on the LDS Church and focused solely on the one area that would substantiate its intended message.
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