PBS raising issues about City Creek Center

In case you haven’t seen it, PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly (a show I regularly watch because I’m geeky like that) is running a story on the Mormon-owned, $1.5 billion+ new retail center in SLC – City Creek Center.

This exchange between Lucky Severson and a UofU professor from the transcript pretty much sums up my view:

SEVERSON: Stephen Goldsmith, the former director of city planning, is now an associate professor at the University of Utah who teaches a class about the ethics of shaping communities. He says he sees a disconnect between the business side of the church, which is constructing 900,000 square feet of retail space, and the values the church constantly preaches.

GOLDSMITH: Some of those values are frugality, modesty, humility, and its interesting to see how a temple to consumerism somehow is aligned with those values. What church do you know of thats building retail space any place else in the world?

profxm

I'm a college professor and, well, a professional X-Mormon. Thus, ProfXM. I love my Mormon family, but have issues with LDS Inc. And I'm not afraid to tell LDS Inc. what I really think... anonymously, of course!

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3 Responses

  1. LdChino says:

    Thanks for the link, interesting story, esp. for someone like me who knew jack all about that project. “Vaticanization” seems like a keeper in the handy description department. Nice to see the boost to the local labor market, but maybe I missed the part where they explained where the new customers would be coming from? Anyways, the weirdest visual for me was that rendering of the $2 million condo. I mean, penthouses with panorama views scream sexy to me. I can’t imagine dropping that kind of coin for the privilege of having my view stuck on the Mormon temple channel 24/7. Weird.

  2. Sanford says:

    “I cant imagine dropping that kind of coin for the privilege of having my view stuck on the Mormon temple channel 24/7.”

    How many super-rich Mormons do you know?

  3. Ulysseus says:

    Unless of course you get vicarious kicks from doing kinky things while looking out over the temple. It takes all types.

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