Following nearly two months of debate, five public meetings and feedback from hundreds of area residents, Cody’s planning board has narrowly approved The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ plans to build a temple in the city.

At a Tuesday meeting, the Cody Planning, Zoning and Adjustment Board voted 4-2 to approve the site plan for the 9,950 square foot facility — the last blessing the church needed from the board.

“We appreciate city leaders and the thoughtful deliberations they have had as our request to build a sacred house of worship in Cody was considered. This was balanced knowing the community concerns that were raised and resolved consistent with city ordinances and future plans,” Jimmie Edwards, the second counselor of the Cody Wyoming Stake Presidency, said in a statement.

The approval was conditioned on most of the temple’s exterior lighting being shut off from roughly 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., a concession the church offered to address concerns from the board and area residents.

The church also offered to lower the height of the temple’s tower, from 101 feet to 85 feet. However, that compromise was not adopted by the board. Kim Borer — the eventual swing vote among the six participating board members — said she felt church officials presented the 16-foot reduction as a take-it-or-leave-it “ultimatum,” which she resented.

“I have many, many, many associates that are with the LDS church and I strongly believe that they should have a temple here,” Borer said during the meeting, tearing up. “But I do not like being bullied.”

She was among five board members who’d taken issue with the height of the tower, feeling it was not in harmony with the nearby residential neighborhood on the west end of the Olive Glenn Golf Course. But with the board rejecting the 85-foot compromise, the church is moving forward with the 101-foot design.

“Given the decision of the board, the church only has approval to build the temple as originally submitted,” Edwards said.

However, a group of neighbors who want the temple to be built elsewhere are interpreting the board’s decision differently, since a separate conditional use permit for the project references the 30-foot height restriction in that zoning district.

“It’s our understanding that they’re limited to the 30-foot height,” Terry Skinner, a member of the Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods group, said Wednesday.

Whether the tower is subject to the Rural Residential Zoning District’s height limit has been extensively debated, with City Planner Todd Stowell insisting it’s exempt but a majority of the board rejecting that interpretation.

Asked what Tuesday’s decision meant for the tower’s height, Board Chair Carson Rowley called it “the million dollar question,” suggesting it would be up to city staff to determine the next steps. Cody City Attorney Scott Kolpitcke noted that the church’s application proposed a 100-foot, 11-inch tower and the board’s approval of the site plan “did not include any conditions or limits on the height.”

Contention and confusion

Tuesday’s meeting concluded a convoluted and contentious review process that’s bitterly divided the Cody community.

The church has already filed two lawsuits that ask a judge to clarify and overrule some of the board’s earlier decisions on the project, though Edwards said the church wants to resolve them “as promptly as possible.” Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods is seeking to intervene in one suit and could potentially file its own appeal now that the board has approved the project; the neighbors’ group contends the temple will hurt their views and increase traffic, light, density and stormwater runoff while violating Cody’s planning rules. Skinner said the group will determine its next steps “once we get a clearer understanding as to what actually that site plan approval involved.”

“I think if you were to interview 20 people coming out of that meeting [Tuesday], just like previous meetings, they would have echoed the same question: What just happened?” Skinner said, adding later that, “The amount of confusion that seemed to reign, during and after [the board meeting], is really indicative that they were undecided.”

The planning board’s meetings in June, July and this week drew hundreds of attendees, including a large contingent of church members who came to Tuesday’s meeting in their Sunday dress.

Ahead of the first public hearing in mid-June, around 2,000 people signed petitions supporting and opposing the plans and the board received well over 1,000 individual comments — including roughly 150 in just the past week, Rowley said.

“The public pressure on this to approve or deny this has been overwhelming on this board,” said member Scott Richard, adding that the volunteers listened to everyone and tried their best to interpret the city’s ordinances and master plan.

Gesturing to the hundreds of people gathered at the Cody Auditorium on Tuesday, Richard noted that they are friends, clients, relatives, loved ones and neighbors “that we all rely on.”

“So no matter the outcome of what this vote is and what this ends up being, at the end of the day we’ve all lost, if you look at what has divided this community,” Richard said. “And my hope is that we can all grow together, love one another and move forward as a community past this, regardless of the outcome today.”

A divided board

At one point in Tuesday’s meeting — after the board deadlocked 3-3 on motions to approve or deny the site plan — it appeared that the panel might again fail to reach a decision.

Rowley previously opposed the site plan, but was won over by the compromises on the tower height and the lighting. He said the church worked to mitigate the board’s concerns and “they’ve met everything else that we’ve specifically asked for.”

“It’s maybe not my favorite answer or my favorite vote from a personal standpoint, but that’s how I’ve looked through everything and have to get to the end here today,” Rowley said.

In response to one of his questions, a church official indicated that going below 85 feet on the tower would compromise the design and architecture. The board’s ability to review the height was limited after the church withdrew an application for a special exemption, contending it wasn’t needed. 

Richard and board member Matt Moss — who is a member of the church — joined Rowley in supporting the site plan with the compromises, while members Dan Schein, Josh White and Borer voted no. A vote to deny the site plan failed on those same lines.

Rowley warned that rejecting the compromise could result in the church filing an appeal that didn’t include the concessions. He also mentioned the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a federal law that prohibits local planning authorities from discriminating against churches and other religious institutions.

However, Schein said religion had nothing to do with his concerns and noted that not all of the LDS church’s temples have steeples. For instance, when building a temple in Tucson, Arizona, several years ago, the church replaced a 95-foot steeple with a dome. The intent, church officials told the Deseret News in 2017, was to fit in with local architecture and avoid the need for a zoning variance.

“These recent examples demonstrate that a temple can serve its intended purpose to the church without a steeple, and in my opinion, this board is not being unduly burdensome,” Schein said.

Potential litigation

Church attorneys from Salt Lake raised the specter of RLUIPA in a discussion with the neighbors’ group and their attorney last week, Skinner said, and asserted that the neighbors could be ordered to pay attorney’s fees for the church and city.

“We were threatened, we were intimidated by this threat of a lawsuit,” Skinner said, contending that both the neighbors and the city had been bullied.

During Tuesday’s meeting, a different attorney representing the LDS church, Kendal Hoopes of Sheridan, said the church was reserving all of its legal rights, but offering the compromises as a way to move forward.

“The church very much wants this to be a benefit to the city,” Hoopes said. “The church knows it can’t satisfy every concern, but they do want to try to recognize concerns about dark skies; they do want to put forward a solution that allows the board to go forward and hopefully do so in a positive way for everyone.”

After the board rejected the compromise, Moss — who’s a member of the church — specifically asked Borer and Josh White why they were voting no.

“We have to at least let the applicant know why they’re being denied,” he said, adding that, “We can’t just deny it because we don’t like it.”

White didn’t comment, but Borer shared her concerns about bullying, saying that she’d wanted both sides to find common ground.

“And that hasn’t happened,” she said. Borer later joined with Rowley, Richard and Moss to approve the plan with no conditions related to height; she described it as “ignoring the elephant in the room.”

In Wednesday’s statement, Edwards said the church appreciates the “robust and heartening” support the temple has received from church members, friends and neighbors.

“As we move forward, we look forward to bringing the community together,” he said.