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