President Hinckley announced in October that two new temples would be built in the Salt Lake Valley. One of the temples was announced for South Jordan's Daybreak development. The other was said to be in the "southwest" part of the valley, but church officials have not been any more specific than that.

Despite the church's statement, Mortimer said he believes the church has not made its announcement yet because of the pending lawsuit, filed in December 2003 by landowners Sorenson Real Estate and Development Associates seeking de-annexation from Bluffdale after the City Council denied a zoning change that would allow the extension of Rosecrest, already being built in Herriman, into Bluffdale.

Opposition among residents to the development — planned for a rural chunk of Bluffdale's west side — led to Mortimer and Clark's defeat in the November election. Both had tried to negotiate with the developers to avoid losing the disputed land — about 40 percent of Bluffdale's total area.

The lawsuit is set to go to trial Jan. 30, and Mortimer believes his successor, Mayor Claudia Anderson, and the City Council, which includes two newly elected members, need to settle with developers quickly or they risk losing the land to unincorporated Salt Lake County or Herriman. Residents, he said, will not want to lose the chance to have an LDS temple in their city.

Clark agreed that the temple is one more reason that the city needs to fight to keep the land in Bluffdale.

"For the people who are now in the position to do the negotiating to try to keep this land in Bluffdale, I certainly hope they will look at that and understand what the consequences are if the land is disconnected," he said.

Temple sites are typically a draw for people. When the LDS Church announced in October 2004 that a temple would be built in Draper, property values more than doubled around the site.

And while talking openly about a proposed temple site could have saved Mortimer and Clark's re-election bids, both said they believed it should not have become an election issue.

"It's been out in public," Mortimer said of talk about a planned temple in Bluffdale. "It's been talked about in our community. I wish it would have gotten to this level so we could have gotten a little more serious about the negotiations. But without it being confirmed it would have looked like it was political (if he had talked about it). And I was mayor at the time, so anything that wasn't confirmed, I had to be careful with my opinion."

Utah billionaire James LeVoy Sorenson of Sorenson Real Estate has a history of generous donations to the LDS Church. Recent donations include more than $30 million for restoration of the Nauvoo Illinois Temple, dedicated in June 2002. In 2001, Sorenson formed the Sorenson Legacy Foundation, through which he donated $5 million to the church's Perpetual Education Fund.

The Sorenson Legacy Foundation was established primarily for the purpose of giving to the LDS Church.

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E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com