A monthslong quarrel between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the leadership of a Texas town over a proposed temple appears to be at an end — at least for now.
The two parties announced separately this week that they came to an agreement during mediation over a new, shrunken version of the building planned for Fairview, a Dallas suburb of 10,800 people known for its acre-size lots and wide-open skies.
“We are grateful that town officials from Fairview were willing to discuss the concerns of the community with church representatives,” church spokesperson Sam Penrod said in a statement, “and we were able to reach an agreement to move forward.”
The compromise proposal, which shaves 53 feet off the originally planned 173-foot steeple for the McKinney Temple and more than 10,000 feet from its overall square footage, has, Penrod noted, “the support of the mayor and the council.”
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) An artist's rendering of the originally proposed McKinney Texas Temple to be built in nearby Fairview. The initial plan called for a multistory, 43,000-square-foot temple with a 173-foot steeple. A compromise proposes a single-story, 30,000-square-foot temple with a 120-foot steeple.
(Shelby Tauber | Special to The Tribune) The lot where a proposed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple may be built in Fairview, Texas, is photographed in May 2024. The back of the lot is lined with homes.
Indeed, in a statement of his own, Mayor Henry Lessner, previously a vocal opponent, said the Town Council had given the new design its unanimous approval.
“We appreciate the efforts of all those involved in working together in good faith to try to produce a compromise solution that will protect the town’s character and zoning laws,” Lessner added, “while at the same time allowing the church to construct the temple at its chosen site.”
While viewed as a promising step by advocates of the building, the nonbinding agreement does not represent the final go-ahead for the project. Rather, the new design must start at the beginning of the approval process, starting with the zoning commission, which will review the application Feb. 13.
The Town Council is currently scheduled to vote on the project March 4.
In the meantime, Lessner told The Salt Lake Tribune on Wednesday, pushback against the smaller version is already brewing from residents “who are struggling to understand why religious organizations just can’t follow…our ordinances…like everyone else has to.”
Others, he continued, wonder “why a temple with its exclusive membership doesn’t have to pay property tax” — a common federal exemption granted to religious institutions for their places of worship.
Joel Schuh, a Fairview resident who shares a property line with the proposed temple, said the deal left him with “mixed feelings.”
“The proposed mediated specifications still do not strictly adhere to the Town of Fairview ordinances,” the previously staunch opponent noted, “in particular, concerning building and steeple height.”
Town ordinances cap building sizes in residential zones like the one the temple is slated for at 35 feet. Besides the steeple, the structure itself will reach 45 feet in places.
Even so, Schuh deemed the new proposal “worth reviewing.”
“The mistake would be to make hasty conclusions,” he said, “or litigious solutions based on historical emotions and outdated facts.”
The original temple design called for a multistory, 43,000-square-foot structure, which, at 173 feet (initially proposed steeple included) would have made it the tallest in town.
In August, the Town Council voted down this design, with the mayor commenting that such a structure would appear like a building from “some alien civilization.”
Views about the church itself, he repeatedly emphasized to The Tribune at the time, had nothing to do with his opposition to the project.
“There have been no negative comments about the LDS Church,” Lessner said, including other community members in that assessment. “I’m aware of [the church’s] history, that they were persecuted. That’s part of their DNA, I think. But that is not happening here in any way, shape or form.”
(Henry Lessner) Fairview, Texas, Mayor Henry Lessner says the new design was met with unanimous approval by town officials.
Some Latter-day Saints dispute this assertion.
“I have been involved in city government off and on for 20 years,” Latter-day Saint Rainey Rogers from the neighboring town of McKinney said at the Aug. 6 meeting. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the animus that I have felt from this City Council toward a religious group in all my life.”
Similar cantankerous debates have played out in other parts of the country impacted by the church’s historic temple-building spree, including Tooele, Utah, Cody, Wyoming, Bakersfield, California, and Las Vegas.
Erin and Matthew DeLoe were among the most vocal opponents against a single-spired, three-story, 70,000-square-foot temple in their semi-rural enclave on the northwestern edge of Las Vegas. Unlike the Fairview town hall, their city leaders approved the monumental structure as is.
(Rachel Aston | Special to The Tribune) The proposed site of a second Las Vegas temple seen from Lone Mountain.
News of the concessions their Texas counterparts were able to extract has, the couple said, left them feeling “betrayed” — both by their town council and church representatives, who never wavered from their stance that compromise was impossible if the temple was to meet worshippers’ needs.
“We would’ve loved,” Matthew said, “to have been afforded the same treatment [as Fairview].”
Devout Latter-day Saints gather in temples to participate in salvific rituals, such as eternal marriages, considered too sacred to perform outside their hallowed halls.
Everything about their design, including the steeple, is designed to focus the visitor’s attention on heaven. Unlike meetinghouses, they are closed on Sunday, reserved for faithful members and are not used for public functions.
Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
