Located 50 miles east of Yellowstone National Park, Cody, Wyoming’s website describes it as a “thriving tourist community” that focuses on the needs of its residences as well as visitors.
With mountain views all around the rural city, it has physical similarities to the Heber Valley, and also like the Heber Valley, the LDS Church wants to build a temple there.
Cody Mayor Matt Hall said the church chose a beautiful place to build the temple in his city, but many neighbors don’t want the proposed 101-foot building with a tower blocking their views. Plus, according to neighborhood zoning rules, that’s 71 feet too tall.
Unlike in Wasatch County, the church secured a conditional use permit to build the temple in Cody, but not a building permit just yet.
That’s because the mayor is blocking the building permit. He said in recent months, the church requested a special exemption to build the 100-foot tower. He blocked it days after his planning and zoning board approved the designs, but whether or not that also legally approved the special height exemption was unclear.
“We just decided to kind of put a hold on issuing the building permit until we could at least sort out for ourselves just exactly how the height was determined,” Hall said. “Cody is not all that dissimilar to the Heber City area in some ways. We're surrounded by mountains, and a lot of people like to be able to enjoy the views, as part of the reason we have within our ordinance that 30-feet height limit.”
He said to appease neighbors’ concerns, he hopes the church would consider building a smaller temple instead.
He didn’t know an official number but guessed out of the city’s 10,000 residents, about 10% are LDS. He said most of the citizen opposition has come from a group called Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods, consisting mainly of residents nearby the proposed temple site.
He also said his office can’t reverse decisions made by planning and zoning, and he doesn’t plan to block the permit forever.
“What we're really trying to do,” Hall said, “is just see if we can get the applicant to kind of come back and maybe discuss just some other measures that would help with the design and with where it's going and how it will look, and maybe even some other concessions to help with the neighborhood it is going to be built in. I don't think there are many (areas) in town where there are, like, a four- to five-acre parcel that would be available within the city limits.”
Wasatch County Manager Dustin Grabau said the same thing wouldn’t happen in the Heber Valley approval process. That’s because the governments work differently and the projects are at different stages, but Wasatch County still has options to negotiate specifics.
“We have not yet granted any approval for the Heber Valley temple project, so I think the advantage that means for us is, we are still able to negotiate what fits in our community,” Grabau said. “That's where I expect this next step with the planning commission and the county council will have a lot of robust discussion around what should it be, and does that fit our values?”
Next, the church plans to seek development approvals. County staff and church planners will prepare agreements that the planning commission and county council will review, then the council can vote to confirm.
Those decisions have not been announced for county meetings yet.
The LDS Church’s media office declined KPCW’s request for comment on the temples in the Heber Valley and Cody.
