Latter-day Saints temple in Mesa set to reopen after 3-year closure for renovations
Oct 13, 2021, 4:35 AM | Updated: 7:53 am
PHOENIX — A nearly century-old Latter-day Saints temple in Mesa is set to reopen soon after being closed for more than three years for renovations.
A public open house at the Mesa Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, located at Main Street and First Avenue, will begin Saturday and run every day except Sundays through Nov. 20.
A rededication for the 75,000-square-foot temple, which opened in 1927 and has been closed since May 2018, will happen Dec. 12.
The renovation represents the second major refurbishment since the temple’s opening.
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“The Lord will be very pleased [with this remodel],” Bishop W. Christopher Waddell of the Presiding Bishopric said in a press release.
“It’s clear that everyone that worked on it was blessed. It’s not easy to modernize a building that’s almost 100 years old.”
The 20-acre grounds include updates to the temple’s exterior and interior, such as an expanded reflection pool, more than 300 olive and palm trees, and a new irrigation system.
The visitors’ center, completed in August, was relocated to enhance the view of the temple from Main Street.
Improvements to the temple’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems were also completed.
“In such a hot climate, if we do not improve the HVAC and the comfort level of this building, it won’t matter how nice everything else looks,” Dawson Stewart of Porter Brothers Construction said in the release.
Interior designs popular in the 1920s remain. That includes the classical grand hall, which was built of gray granite and has a similar look to when the temple was originally built.
Murals in instruction rooms were removed to allow for repairs and upgrades, but the church commissioned artists to create similar ones from the church’s original opening.
Tickets for the open house are free and available to be reserved online.
