LDS Church is violating the terms of the Special Warranty Deed they signed with Beesmark; Not enough parking!

LDS Church has a massive parking problem on their hands as it relates to the Family Search Plat.  They are also in violation of a Special Warranty Deed they signed with Thanksgiving Point.

Shared parking.

First lets take a look at the language in the Special Warranty Deed and Amended Special Warranty Deed between the LDS Church and Thanksgiving Point.


Original Special Warranty Deed - Dated July 2, 2015
Between Thanksgiving Point Development Company L.C. and The Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Deed Language:

Grantee will maintain a Family Search and Discovery Center in the building located closest to the southern border of the Property consisting of at least 6000 square feet and that is open to the general public. Grantee will also maintain sufficient parking on the Property to service such center.

Special Warranty Deed, original, Family Search Center, Southern Border, maintain sufficient parking for the Center.

  Amended Special Warranty Deed - Dated February 2, 2016
Between Thanksgiving Point Development Company L.C. and The Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Deed Language:

Thanksgiving Point Development Company L.C. mends certain covenants of the Grantee contained in that certain Special Warranty deed recorded with the Utah County Recorder, State of Utah, on July 9, 2015 which the special warranty deed conveyed and warranted against only for those claiming by, through or under it (and no others) to the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints........

It goes on to say

Now therefore the undersigned Grantor and Grantee hereby agree and adopt this amended Special Warranty Deed and the following covenants  and warranties contained herein below.

Grantee's statement of covenants contained in the original deed is hereby deleted, amended and replaced as follows:

Key language

Grantee will maintain a Family Search and Discovery Center in the building located closest to the northern border of the Property consisting of at least 6000 square feet and open to the general public. Grantee will also maintain sufficient parking on the Property to service such center.

Amended Special Warranty Deed showing the Family Search Center now in the building on the Northern Border.

Second page of the amended agreement, they still need to maintain sufficient parking to accommodate the visitors to the Center.

 Notice they changed the building location from the southern border to the northern border.

However, they have a massive problem.

Herein lies their MASSIVE problem.

The special warranty deed reads...

"Grantee will also maintain sufficient parking on the Property to service such center."

According to a traffic impact study prepared by Project Engineering Consultants (PEC), dated April 13, 2016 and submitted to and paid for by Special Projects Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has not accounted for a single parking stall or a single car, bus, RV or SUV to the Family Search and Discovery Center. I have a brief conversation with a person who works for PEC and when I asked them why they did not account for a single car visiting the Family Search and Discovery Center they told me they had no knowledge that a Family Search and Discovery Center was located on the first floor of the Family Search Commercial office building. The told me that the LDS Church had not mentioned to them that there would be additional car trips from the Family Search Commercial office building.

Additionally

According to a shared parking study prepared by Hales Engineering, dated April 20, 2016 and submitted to Brent Bigelow, Meetinghouse Project Management for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the LDS Church has not accounted for a single parking stall for the Family Search and Discovery Center. NOT ONE! They certainly have not maintained sufficient parking to service the Family Search and Discovery Center. When I asked Ryan Hales owner of Hales engineering why he did not account for one car visiting the Family Search and Discovery Center, he told me the LDS Church did not tell him about the Family Search and Discovery Center. That is right, the LDS Church did not reveal to the firm they hired to conduct a parking study that there would be between 500 - 1500 visitors to the Family Search and Discovery Center on a daily basis.

There have been numerous meetings with Lehi City Staff and in 2+ meetings before the Lehi City Planning Commission (recorded meetings and can be seen on Lehi City's website) where the LDS Church and Lehi City Staff in their discussions of the shared parking analysis have NEVER mentioned ANY parking requirement for the Family Search and Discovery Center. The ONLY parking mentioned and discussed is for the Family Search Commercial Office Building and the LDS Stake Center, NEVER the Family Search and Discovery Center.

The LDS Church has mentioned that the Family Search and Discovery Center will be the shining beacon upon the hill as it talks about this unique Discovery Center on the first floor of the Worldwide Corporate Headquarters of Family Search, a division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The LDS Church has also mentioned that between 500 -1500 people will be utilizing the services of the Family Search and Discovery Center on a daily basis. 

The LDS Church has mentioned that people from all over will be utilizing the services of the Family Search and Discovery Center and will be arriving in buses, RV's, cars, large vehicle and Front Runner.

Herein lies a MASSIVE PROBLEM for the LDS Church.

They are in violation of the language in the Special Warranty Deed they originally signed and the amended Special Warranty Deed which they committed to ....

"Grantee will also maintain sufficient parking on the Property to service such center."

Not only has the Grantee (LDS Church) not maintained sufficient parking on the property to service such center, they have not accounted for a single parking stall for the Family Search and Discovery Center.

Hundreds of cars, numerous buses and RV's will have no place to park! As part of the conditions placed on the LDS Church granting them permission to build their massive corporate office building, Thanksgiving Point Architectural Development Reveiw Committee required that Garden Drive have its curb painted red. This means there will be NO off street parking ANYWHERE in the area.

The Worldwide Corporate Headquarters of the Family Search Corporation will have 550 employees.  The Family Search and Discovery Center will have volunteers and the LDS Stake Center will need parking services as well.

In order for the LDS Church to have enough parking for their shared parking concept with the LDS Stake Center, they needed and were granted a variance by the Thanksgiving Architectural Review Committee, reducing the size of the parking stall so as to increase the number of parking stalls for the project. Had Thanksgiving Point not granted them a variance on their parking stall size requirement, this project could not have been built as proposed by the the LDS Church.

Parking is a big time problem for this project and the LDS Church and the staff at the City of Lehi know it, that is why NO ONE is talking about the parking requirement for the Family Search and Discovery Center.  The LDS Church and the staff at the City of Lehi have ignored the FACT that people from all over will be visiting the Family Search and Discovery Center. Neither the Staff at the City or the LDS Church wants to mention the FACT that the Family Search and Discovery Center REQUIRES visitor parking.

They have ignored it in their traffic study, the parking study, in planning commission meetings, in staff development review 
committee meetings, no one is talking about the required parking for the Family Search and Discovery Center.

The ONLY want willing to talk about it is ME! And they are listening to me.

The  LDS Church has once again violated the language in the Special Warranty Deed. They will not be able to maintain sufficient parking on the Property to service such center. IN FACT, they have no parking allocated by the City or the LDS Church for the Family Search and Discovery Center.

If you were to use Lehi City Development code requirement of 3 stalls per 1000 square feet of commercial office building, the LDS Church and the Staff at the City of Lehi could say they have allocated 18 parking stalls to the Family Search and Discovery Center.  This is probably enough parking stalls for those working at the center. Certainly not enough to provide enough parking for 500 -1500 visitors arriving in buses, RV's, large vehicles and cars.  

There is no RV, bus or large vehicle parking for this project. 
The LDS Church has mentioned that people will be coming from all over and spending days doing genealogy work arriving in buses, RV's, large vehicles (large SUV's possibly with trailers) and cars. 

Not a single parking stall has been allocated to accommodate for these visitors to the Family Search and Discovery Center.

In order for the LDS Church to push this project through the City, they needed to maximize the parking by reducing the size of the parking stall requirement by Thanksgiving Point. They needed to go to a shared parking concept with the LDS Stake Center (The City of Lehi has said the LDS Stake Center only needs 74 parking stalls, even though a typical LDS Stake Center has over 250+ parking stalls), Lastly, the LDS Church and the City HAD TO IGNORE the Family Search and Discovery Center's need for parking.  If they allocated parking stalls for the Family Search and Discovery Center (500 -1500 people per day), there would not be enough parking for the project to proceed. They may need upwards of 400 parking stalls to accommodate the visitors to the Family Search and Discovery Center.  There is simply not enough parking for this project, the city knows it, the LDS Church knows it, Hales Engineering knows it and PEC knows it, that is why they don't want to talk about it.

The LDS Church and the City of Lehi, PEC and Hales Engineering all ignored the FACT that 500 -1500 people per day will be visiting the Family Search and Discovery Center.

Where will these people park?

This is a clear violation of the Special Warranty Deed!!!!

Separate Question?

Why did the LDS Church and Thanksgiving Point amend the Special Warranty Deed and change the location of the Family Search and Discovery Center from the Southern Border to the Northern Border?

Because I called them out in numerous blog post and showed the world that the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was willing to break a contractual commitment they made to build the center on the southern border of the property.

I am calling they out again.

The Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have not accounted for a single parking stall for the visitors to the Family Search and Discovery Center. The Presiding Bishop has not taken into account any bus, RV or large vehicle parking and has once again violated the terms of the agreement they made with the Thanksgiving Point Corporation.

What is the Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church going to do to fix this massive problem?