Mormons Plan Temple in Manhattan

August 8, 2002

Ending weeks of speculation among Manhattan Mormons, the LDS Church confirmed Wednesday it will create a temple in a six-story building across the street from New York City's Lincoln Center.

Of all the temples built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, this will be only the second, after the one in Hong Kong, that is not free-standing.

The temple will occupy the top two floors of the nondescript church-owned building, which long has been used for Sunday services. There will still be a chapel on the third floor, classrooms, a cultural hall for midweek social activities and a genealogical center open to the public, said LDS spokesman Dale Bills. Design and renovation work has already begun.

For more than 11 million Latter-day Saints worldwide, including more than 62,000 in the New York area, temples are where Christ's teachings are reaffirmed through marriage, baptism and other sacred ordinances.

"I am absolutely overjoyed," said Sarah Asplund, a singer who lives in upper Manhattan. "This is an incredible blessing to be able to jump on the subway and go to the temple. It feels like Utah -- it's so close."

The new space will be "the people's temple," said Chris Carlson, a technology consultant in Brooklyn. "We like the idea of the rich people in Westchester having to come into the city to go to the temple."

The church also owns property in Harrison, N.Y., about an hour north of the city, but neighbors oppose plans for a temple there, arguing that traffic would increase and that the building would be too large for the area. The church recently agreed to many concessions, including reducing the size of the temple, but has still not been able to finalize its plans there.

The Manhattan building is on a parcel of land between 65th and 66th streets on Columbus Avenue that the church bought in 1972. It leased the property for 99 years to a developer who built a high- rise apartment building and the adjoining six-story building, which had stores on the street level.

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