Fairview and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reached an initial compromise in the ongoing dispute over the proposed McKinney Texas Temple.
In a non-binding memorandum of settlement, Mayor Henry Lessner said the church proposed decreasing the temple’s height by around 54 feet. The new proposed temple is around 30,000 square feet with a steeple height of 120 feet, according to Melissa McKneely, communications director for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Dallas.
Lessner said the church’s new proposal is a one-story temple, which is within the town’s zoning laws. A raised portion on top of the building increases the height to 45 feet, and a “tower” on top reaches 120 feet. Five or ten feet of it is a “lightning rod” structure, the mayor said.
Fairview’s town council agreed in a special session Monday to conduct a public hearing on the non-binding settlement’s new proposal. Lessner said the council agreed unanimously to move the proposed settlement to public discussion. If the public hearing goes well, Lessner said, the church will return to the planning and zoning committee with their revised plan. The proposal would then return to the council for approval.
“Temples are sacred and holy places for Latter-day Saints and are considered to be a house of the Lord,” McKneely said in a statement. “We are grateful that town officials from Fairview were willing to discuss the concerns of the community with Church representatives and we were able to reach an agreement to move forward.”
The new proposal “represents a mutually agreed compromise,” McKneely said, and the church looks forward to participating in the ensuing public process, according to her statement.
“They significantly changed the configuration, the design of the building,” Lessner said “It’s quite an attractive building and they made a significant change … it looks very different than what what it was before.”
The original proposed temple was a 43,200 square-foot building, 65 feet tall with a spire reaching almost 174 feet. The temple was planned for a lot next to an existing meetinghouse in the town. The lot falls under residential-area zoning restrictions that state buildings can have a maximum height of 35 feet. If built, it would have been the town’s tallest building.
The Town Council denied a permit request for the temple in August after hours of public debate and months of discussion among church members, town residents and local officials. While members of the church have said the proposed temple would accommodate the church’s growing population, those in opposition said a building of that size would look out of place in a residential neighborhood.
The town of nearly 11,000 people around 30 miles north of Dallas braced for a lawsuit after the permit denial. In October, the Town Council announced a Zoning Defense Fund to collect donations to protect from potential litigation from the church. On Nov. 18, church and town leaders met to participate in mediation guided by former U.S. Magistrate Jeff Kaplan as an independent third party. Lessner, Fairview’s Mayor Pro Tem John Hubbard, the town’s manager and attorney were present at the mediation, the mayor said.
Lessner said mediation took all day Nov. 18, and involved considering the church’s new plans, making adjustments and reaching a non-binding compromise. Kaplan went between two rooms, Lessner said, and town and church leaders did not discuss the mediation in the same room.
Lessner said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the church’s adjustments. The proposed structure went from 174 feet to about 120 feet, a roughly 54-foot concession. Lessner said the dimensions aren’t yet exact, but said he thinks the new proposal is less dominating and overpowering.
“It’s still tall. I wish it were 20, 30, feet shorter,” Lessner said. “They made a big concession, we made a big concession.”
The mediation will help the town avoid a lawsuit, Lessner said, which would financially strain the town. He said the money already donated to the Zoning Defense Fund will go toward legal costs they’ve already incurred from hiring an attorney. Anything left over, which Lessner doesn’t expect to be much, will go to the Friends of Fairview First Responders Association, a nonprofit supporting police and firefighters in the town.