Blog

Jul 16, 2023

A portion of Church Office Building Plaza is open to the public

Renovation continues on Temple Square in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, May 2, 2023.

Renovation continues on Temple Square in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, May 2, 2023.

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

This article was first published in the ChurchBeat newsletter. Sign up to receive the newsletter in your inbox each Wednesday night.

This newsletter recently noted that a portion of the Church Office Building Plaza was nearing completion with some new features. Sure enough, it will open to the public on Thursday, June 1, according to a news release issued by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

You can access it from the west side of State Street, where you will see the stone monument engraved with a Bible verse and from a walkway between the Church Administration Building and the Lion House.

A rendering shows the portion of the Church Office Building Plaza that is now open to the public. In pink are the areas of the plaza and Temple Square that are under construction and not open to the public.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The church also said the Salt Lake Temple renovation had reached another major milestone.

Workers now have installed the first of 98 base isolators in the foundation. The base isolators are the key factor in protecting the landmark pioneer headquarters temple from the swaying earth during an earthquake.

A single base isolator weighs 18,000 pounds but can carry a weight of 8 million pounds. The base isolators will allow the temple to move side to side by as far as five feet during an earthquake.

Here's my story on how the base isolator system works.

Now that part of the Church Office Building Plaza is complete, work continues on landscaping the Main Street Plaza, the area closer to the east end of the temple where the reflecting pool was. The pond was torn out but is being replaced.

Former BYU president Kevin Worthen headed to Yale for a year (May 30)

The First Presidency released the exact location site of the Charlotte North Carolina Temple.

May 31 is President Henry B. Eyring's 90th birthday. He spoke to the Church News podcast and shared life lessons and his testimony.

Elder Gary E. Stevenson met with government and religious leaders in Brazil.

The church published a new Inspirational Message video that illustrates Elder Clark G. Gilbert's "Parable of the Slope." The five-minute video shows two hands using sand to create a series of images that includes slopes, scales, a compass and Jesus Christ.

A Latter-day Saint company in the United Kingdom recently bought an Amazon warehouse outside London, according to the Evening Standard. To learn more about the history and purposes of church finances and investments, read how history helps explain the church's finances and decision-making today.

This is a good Q&A: How Ashley Hatch prioritizes faith while chasing World Cup dreams.

I’m spending less time reading right now because it is softball coaching season for me. As a volunteer coach, I had to listen to this podcast, and it was a good one: "Why Youth Sports in America Are in Decline."

Renovation continues on Temple Square in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, May 2, 2023. An engraving quotes Isaiah 2:2.

Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News

A view of the plaza south of the Church Office Building while under construction, Salt Lake City, Utah, in April 2023.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints