World’s 51st Mormon Temple Will Be Built in Boston Area

Construction of a $30-million Mormon temple featuring six spires, 76 to 139 feet tall, will begin here in the Boston area as soon as building permits are obtained, a church official said.

“We’re absolutely elated,” Grant Bennett, the Mormon bishop for the Belmont congregation, said after a local zoning appeals board approved the plans. All six spires will be above the 72-foot limit imposed by the town’s bylaws.

The 4-1 vote to grant a special permit to construct the building, which will be the 51st Mormon temple worldwide, came after eight public hearings that began in July and drew hundreds of people.

Opponents complained that the temple would dominate the landscape. But some Mormons viewed the protest as an attack on the religious significance of the steeples, the grandeur of which is rooted in Mormon tradition.

The three-story, 94,100-square-foot Boston Temple, as it will be called, will serve the estimated 5,000 Mormons in Boston, as well as 40,000 in the rest of New England. The 8.9-acre site is a rock ledge 40 feet above Massachusetts Route 2.