The City of Cody’s Community Development Director and City Planner Todd Stowell announced that a public hearing of the Planning, Zoning, and Adjustment Board – scheduled in the Cody Auditorium on Wednesday, May 24 – has been canceled. The meeting’s purpose was “to consider the applications related to the Cody Wyoming Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”
But, as of Monday, May 22, that meeting has been canceled.
Haskell Architecture and Engineering of St. George, Utah, is the contractor that will build the temple. Jeremy Bastow, a Senior Architect with the firm, sent an email with the following statement:
“At the request of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we hereby give notice to the City of Cody, WY, that we withdraw our Conditional Use Permit application and height exemption for the Cody WY Temple.
We also give notice of our intent to resubmit a Conditional Use Permit application for the Cody WY temple by this Wednesday without any revisions, with the hope of a new hearing in June 2023.”
Another meeting to be hosted by the LDS Church on Tuesday, May 23, has been postponed. This meeting would have included project team members to explain and answer questions about the project.
While no reason for the application’s withdrawal has been given, the LDS Church may be responding to the growing opposition to the temple’s construction in its current form.
Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods – the Facebook created to oppose the temple’s construction on Skyline Drive – has spent the last week increasing awareness of its cause. The most visible statement is a crane placed on Skyline Drive flying an American flag at a height of 101 feet – the intended height of the Cody Wyoming Temple’s central spire.
On Sunday, the group started a petition asking the City of Cody to deny the LDS Church’s application for the conditional use permit and special exemption.
The two points of contention, the petition argues, are building the temple in a rural residential zone and the requested height variance (71 feet over the current 30-foot height restriction.)
Bastows’s brief statement acknowledges these points. While the Conditional Use Permit will be submitted “without any revisions,” nothing is said about the special height exemption.
The Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods members are adamant that they are not opposed to the construction of the Cody Wyoming Temple. However, many local members of the LDS Church disagree, saying the opposition is religious persecution under the guise of civic concern.
Neither the City of Cody nor the LDS Church has rescheduled their respective meetings.
Hear members of Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods discuss the Cody Wyoming Temple and their reasons to oppose it on Speak Your Piece with Mac Watson.
