Salt Lake Temple Re-Opening Date

[smac97]

LDS Church President Russell Nelson announces when the Salt Lake Temple will reopen

Quote

More than five years after the iconic Salt Lake Temple closed for extensive renovations, repairs and seismic upgrades, church President Russell M. Nelson revealed Friday that the work “to strengthen this sacred House of the Lord for future generations is nearing completion.”

“On February 14, 1853, a groundbreaking ceremony in Salt Lake City began a 40-year journey of faith and sacrifice, culminating in the dedication of the Salt Lake Temple in 1893,” the faith’s 100-year-old prophet-president wrote on his social media channels. “Today, exactly 172 years after the groundbreaking ceremony, I am delighted to announce that the temple will reopen for tours during a public open house from April to October 2027.”
...
He promised more details about events associated with the open house would be forthcoming as the date approaches. The event is expected to attract huge crowds since the pioneer-era edifice hasn’t welcomed the general public inside since just before its original 1893 dedication.

Wow.  Still 2+ years to go.

I anticipate that this will be a great event for the Church.  I look forward to attending the Open House.

Thanks,

-Smac

[JAHS]

A 7 month open house! Has any other open house been that long? They are probably expecting to have people from all over the world coming to see it.

[blackstrap]

3 hours ago, JAHS said:

A 7 month open house!

They may have to " renovate " the floors after. 

[JAHS]

17 minutes ago, blackstrap said:

They may have to " renovate " the floors after. 

In other temple open houses they have had runners covering the floors for people to walk on to preserve the carpet. They also may have to clean them and replace some sections that were damaged or badly soiled by the traffic. But I don't think there has ever been a total replacement of the carpeting after an open house. Now a days everyone wears the plastic booties to keep the carpets clean.

[Peacefully]

26 minutes ago, JAHS said:

In other temple open houses they have had runners covering the floors for people to walk on to preserve the carpet. They also may have to clean them and replace some sections that were damaged or badly soiled by the traffic. But I don't think there has ever been a total replacement of the carpeting after an open house. Now a days everyone wears the plastic booties to keep the carpets clean.

I think the church is willing to pay for cleanup/carpet replacement/ paint touchups in order to host such a historic event. Plus, it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the renovation costs. 

[longview]

9 hours ago, JAHS said:

A 7 month open house! Has any other open house been that long? They are probably expecting to have people from all over the world coming to see it.

Back when the temple was closed, I predicted that there will be three million visitors for the open house. But 7 months? I am thinking more likely 8 to 10 millions.

[Dario_M]

Really? It will still take them 2 years to re-open the temple? That's really long i find. The temple have been closed for quite some time already. 

Edited February 15, 2025 by Dario_M

[webbles]

13 hours ago, Dario_M said:

Really? It will still take them 2 years to re-open the temple? That's really long i find. The temple have been closed for quite some time already. 

They still haven't finished the base isolation system.  It took 3 years to drill all the vertical cores through the temple; https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/temple-square-renovation-update-january-2025 has a bunch of details about the drilling.

[blackstrap]

Out of curiosity I looked up earthquakes in Utah and was surprised to see that the Wasatch front is quite an active area. 

[Rain]

46 minutes ago, blackstrap said:

Out of curiosity I looked up earthquakes in Utah and was surprised to see that the Wasatch front is quite an active area. 

They have been expecting a big one for a long time, though maybe the ones they had a few years ago were big enough?  

[bluebell]

24 minutes ago, Rain said:

They have been expecting a big one for a long time, though maybe the ones they had a few years ago were big enough?  

They are still expecting a big one.  The cities do drills every year, with the church's stakes often (maybe always?) being the backbone of the program, preparing for a disaster of that extent.  It's called The Great Utah Shakeout and this year the practice day is April 17th.

I've never lived in an area where disaster prep was more of a thing.  It was interesting to be a part of it (it was my calling for a while, which was kind of weird because the program was actually through the city and not the church).

[Rain]

1 minute ago, bluebell said:

They are still expecting a big one.  The cities do drills every year, with the church's stakes often (maybe always?) being the backbone of the program, preparing for a disaster of that extent.  It's called The Great Utah Shakeout and this year the practice day is April 17th.

I've never lived in an area where disaster prep was more of a thing.  It was interesting to be a part of it (it was my calling for a while, which was kind of weird because the program was actually through the city and not the church).

Yes, it was interesting with Riverton.  The city was doing prep, but when trying to divide it into sections they felt ward and stake boundaries were a good way to do it since it was already done.  They asked for people to be over each area giving preparedness info from the cuty that generally members, but sometimes not. 

[bluebell]

2 minutes ago, Rain said:

Yes, it was interesting with Riverton.  The city was doing prep, but when trying to divide it into sections they felt ward and stake boundaries were a good way to do it since it was already done.  They asked for people to be over each area giving preparedness info from the cuty that generally members, but sometimes not. 

Our area was divided into areas, each with a block captain.  Maybe riverton was doing the same? 

In the event of a mass casualty emergency, block captains were to check on their groups (usually around 9 houses) and then report to the city staging area (which was the neighborhood chapel) to report on any needs.  This was then relayed to the main coordinator, which would get the info to the right city officials.  They had ham radio operators ready to go in case communications were down, and city CERT volunteers were assigned to different chapels as well.  It was a huge process and every ward building had a large tub that had to be accessible at all times with all the pertinent paperwork and procedures inside so that the first people in the building from the disaster committee (which was mostly just the ward council members) could set everything up and have it all up and running smoothly before the first block captains arrived with their intel.  

Each year during the shakeout we had to do a mock drill and everyone had to respond to the chapel (and the block captains to the houses in their group) as if a real emergency had occurred.  It was not my favorite day of the year, so many moving parts and we dealt with it so infrequently that no one ever really remembered what each person was supposed to do in what order.  But I'm sure it was helpful because without the yearly practice a real disaster would be a giant mess with no coordination at all.

[Rain]

38 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Our area was divided into areas, each with a block captain.  Maybe riverton was doing the same? 

In the event of a mass casualty emergency, block captains were to check on their groups (usually around 9 houses) and then report to the city staging area (which was the neighborhood chapel) to report on any needs.  This was then relayed to the main coordinator, which would get the info to the right city officials.  They had ham radio operators ready to go in case communications were down, and city CERT volunteers were assigned to different chapels as well.  It was a huge process and every ward building had a large tub that had to be accessible at all times with all the pertinent paperwork and procedures inside so that the first people in the building from the disaster committee (which was mostly just the ward council members) could set everything up and have it all up and running smoothly before the first block captains arrived with their intel.  

Each year during the shakeout we had to do a mock drill and everyone had to respond to the chapel (and the block captains to the houses in their group) as if a real emergency had occurred.  It was not my favorite day of the year, so many moving parts and we dealt with it so infrequently that no one ever really remembered what each person was supposed to do in what order.  But I'm sure it was helpful because without the yearly practice a real disaster would be a giant mess with no coordination at all.

Yes, it was further broken into block captains.  They just relied on wards and stakes to choose/ask the captains and get the info to them. They started it up when my husband was emergency prep.  I remember there was some kind of packet he gave out to the captains for each house that had info, but also colored cards to put on your door in an emergency that indicated the situation in the house.

We both got CERT training through the city at the time. 

[Calm]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

Our area was divided into areas, each with a block captain.  Maybe riverton was doing the same? 

My husband is the block captain for our neighborhood, he was asked to do it at church, I believe (it’s been a couple of years, I should check).  We have walkie talkies by the front door all set to go if something happens.  I tease him because he forgets to put our “we are okay/need help” sign in the window for the drills before he goes out to count how many people are putting up their signs for the day (I sleep too late to do it).

Edited February 16, 2025 by Calm

[randy]

On 2/14/2025 at 10:44 AM, JAHS said:

A 7 month open house! Has any other open house been that long? They are probably expecting to have people from all over the world coming to see it.

I believe that the open house will need to be extended....exciting times we live in!

[JustAnAustralian]

1 hour ago, randy said:

I believe that the open house will need to be extended....exciting times we live in!

And then another renovation to clean up after the open house.

[Dario_M]

10 hours ago, webbles said:

They still haven't finished the base isolation system.  It took 3 years to drill all the vertical cores through the temple; https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/temple-square-renovation-update-january-2025 has a bunch of details about the drilling.

Oh how interesting. Thank you for the link. 

[bluebell]

14 hours ago, Calm said:

My husband is the block captain for our neighborhood, he was asked to do it at church, I believe (it’s been a couple of years, I should check).  We have walkie talkies by the front door all set to go if something happens.  I tease him because he forgets to put our “we are okay/need help” sign in the window for the drills before he goes out to count how many people are putting up their signs for the day (I sleep too late to do it).

I'm sure he probably was asked to do it by someone at church, since the cities usually seem to use the wards to coordinate that.  In Layton, our stake emergency prep specialist was also one of the emergency prep people for the city (I don't remember what it was called), and she worked directly with the city to manage the ward emergency prep specialists.  When I was the prep specialist in my ward most of the neighborhood block captains were members (it wasn't a calling of course) but I did ask some nonmembers in the neighborhood if they would like to do it as well and sometimes they would say yes.  

[Stargazer]

On 2/16/2025 at 12:02 AM, bluebell said:

They are still expecting a big one.  The cities do drills every year, with the church's stakes often (maybe always?) being the backbone of the program, preparing for a disaster of that extent.  It's called The Great Utah Shakeout and this year the practice day is April 17th.

I've never lived in an area where disaster prep was more of a thing.  It was interesting to be a part of it (it was my calling for a while, which was kind of weird because the program was actually through the city and not the church).

In my old stake in Washington state we held disaster drills annually. The stake had a strong communications section using Ham radio as its backbone. The disaster we were mostly concerned with was a bad earthquake, since the Pacific NW is subject to them. On the annual drills, home teachers were supposed to go off to check on their families, and then report back to priesthood leaders, then bishops, and finally the ward communications people would report by radio to the stake communications section at the stake center. Each ward had its own frequency in order to communicate with themselves, and the stake communications center monitored them all. We declared normal communications (landline/mobile telephone) to be offline for purpose of the exercise. Once the wards had reported back, the stake communications people would contact the Bishop's Storehouse via ham radio. In the event of an actual situation, the storehouse would report to whomever they were supposed to report to. In order to check efficacy, the stake would secretly assign one or two families in each ward to report invented issues (tree fell on house, building collapsed, and made-up injuries), in order to gauge whether the ward had actually been checking! 

Every ward had developed about 5 to 10 (or more) members who obtained Ham radio licenses -- every year the stake would hold licensing classes -- and 2 meter band radios, at their own expense. I was one of the stake emergency communications specialists, and helped conduct weekly (on Sunday) "call in" or "radio check" exercises when every Ham who wanted to would report in to the Stake Emergency Communications Net. 

We actually used this system on one occasion! And it worked pretty well, all in all. There was a very severe storm with very high winds, and the results were telephone and power outages, trees falling on roads and houses, and so on. Since I lived close to the major town center, my power stayed on (or came back quickly), so I activated the emergency communications net at my house, and coordinated information and communication for the couple of days until things started heading back to normal. I also mounted my radio in my car and drove around to assess some of the damage. Some areas around the stake were out of power for a good week or more. 

[bluebell]

33 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

In my old stake in Washington state we held disaster drills annually. The stake had a strong communications section using Ham radio as its backbone. The disaster we were mostly concerned with was a bad earthquake, since the Pacific NW is subject to them. On the annual drills, home teachers were supposed to go off to check on their families, and then report back to priesthood leaders, then bishops, and finally the ward communications people would report by radio to the stake communications section at the stake center. Each ward had its own frequency in order to communicate with themselves, and the stake communications center monitored them all. We declared normal communications (landline/mobile telephone) to be offline for purpose of the exercise. Once the wards had reported back, the stake communications people would contact the Bishop's Storehouse via ham radio. In the event of an actual situation, the storehouse would report to whomever they were supposed to report to. In order to check efficacy, the stake would secretly assign one or two families in each ward to report invented issues (tree fell on house, building collapsed, and made-up injuries), in order to gauge whether the ward had actually been checking! 

Every ward had developed about 5 to 10 (or more) members who obtained Ham radio licenses -- every year the stake would hold licensing classes -- and 2 meter band radios, at their own expense. I was one of the stake emergency communications specialists, and helped conduct weekly (on Sunday) "call in" or "radio check" exercises when every Ham who wanted to would report in to the Stake Emergency Communications Net. 

We actually used this system on one occasion! And it worked pretty well, all in all. There was a very severe storm with very high winds, and the results were telephone and power outages, trees falling on roads and houses, and so on. Since I lived close to the major town center, my power stayed on (or came back quickly), so I activated the emergency communications net at my house, and coordinated information and communication for the couple of days until things started heading back to normal. I also mounted my radio in my car and drove around to assess some of the damage. Some areas around the stake were out of power for a good week or more. 

That's awesome that you got to put it into real world practice (for something not to horrible) and it worked!