LDS get OK to purchase Human Services Complex

Hundreds of downtown state employees may soon be replaced by students and, eventually, cars under a real-estate deal between the state and the LDS Church.

Lawmakers on Wednesday approved an offer from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to purchase the state's Human Services Complex, on the corner of North Temple and 200 West, for $11 million.

The building, which houses 390 administrative employees of the Utah Department of Human Services, is surrounded by property already owned by the LDS Church.

A church spokesman declined to comment on the deal, referring questions instead to Keith Stepan, director of the state Division of Facilities Construction and Management, who said the church wants the site not because of the building but because of its proximity to other church-owned facilities.

"The address is the important thing for them," he said.

The plan is to use the building as a temporary site for some of the church's educational system as it works on building new locations for the LDS Business College and the Salt Lake branch of Brigham Young University on the block east of the Triad Center — just down the street from the Human Services building.

Stepan said once those new locations open, the building will likely come down to make way for parking facilities for the two schools and the LDS Conference Center to the east.

Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, introduced the deal Wednesday afternoon as part of a revenue bond and capital facilities bill. The senator said the property is a "piece of fairly prime real estate" because of its downtown location.

Negotiations on the 25-year-old, red-brick building have been ongoing between the church and the state since former Gov. Olene Walker's administration, Stepan said. Though the DFCM has authority to purchase and sell state property, the deal needed legislative approval because of the remaining $4.6 million bond on the Human Services building.

The $11 million price tag on the downtown property will be used to pay off that bond and purchase the former BYU-Salt Lake property at 3760 S. Highland Drive, which is now owned by the church, for $6 million.

Leftover money will be used to remodel the building on Highland Drive, which will become the new home for the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind.

Jenkins said the deal gives the state a chance to secure a good location for the USDB at a reasonable price while also unloading an old building that needs some $5 million in renovations.

"From our point of view, this was a decision of whether we wanted to invest in that building or whether we wanted to get out and reinvest somewhere else," the senator said.