New York Times
Published: February 7, 2010
SALT LAKE CITY — 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.
Right: Salt Lake Tribune; left: Tom Smart for The New York Times
Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City around the 1930s, and the adjacent area in the midst of a $1 billion, church-financed construction project today.
City Creek Center, expected to be completed in 2012, will include 20 acres of retail shops and about 700 apartments.
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 — 20 acres of retail shops and residential towers — is scheduled for 2012.
The new vision for Salt Lake City encompasses ideas large and small, bold and restrained - for shaping downtown's future. 