Unfortunately, there is a lack of brotherly love between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its neighbors in Fairview.
The town of about 11,000 in Collin County is bracing for a lawsuit filed by two church members for denying the church’s request to build a massive temple in a residential area on Tuesday. Mayor Henry Lessner told us his office was notified of the lawsuit first thing Wednesday morning, though he had not been served with an official copy as of this writing.
What a pity that it has come to this.
The Mormon Church, as it is informally known, wants to build a temple in Fairview with a tower that will be nearly 174 feet tall, or about 16 stories high. That’s much taller than any other building in the city and far higher than the current 35-foot height limit for the area.
Fairview City Council members said at Tuesday’s packed meeting that they are not opposed to the temple in principle, just its enormous size. They said they would agree to a building height of no more than 70 feet, 4 inches (including the spire). While that’s significantly less than what the church wants, it’s the same size or smaller than two nearby churches.
“This is nothing more than a question of land use planning,” Lessner said shortly before the vote. “The building is too big for this location. That’s all.” In an interview, he told us that the city administration had suggested that the church consider a commercial property that could accommodate a larger building, but that this suggestion was rejected.
A spokeswoman for the church did not respond to two messages we left this week. However, the church has said it is only willing to reduce the height of the tower by about 15 feet. That is not a meaningful attempt to resolve the matter, let alone come to terms with the congregation. Instead, it sets the stage for an unnecessarily drawn-out legal battle.
After the vote, the church issued a statement saying that while it was disappointed, this was “part of an ongoing process to obtain building permits.” The next step in the process should be to go back to the drawing board with Fairview authorities and settle this dispute out of court.
We recognize the protections that churches enjoy under state and federal laws that generally allow them to circumvent local zoning regulations in the name of religious freedom and freedom of expression. Members of the Mormon Church at the City Council meeting and in other gatherings have admirably and respectfully described the importance of their temples and even their tall steeples and spires to the practice of their faith.
But cities and towns have rights too. And we note that Mormon temples come in many shapes and sizes around the world. The Paris temple, for example, has no steeples or spires at all. If the Mormon Church can find a way to fit into the Paris community, it can certainly do the same in Fairview.
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