Dennis Romboy reports:

"As the Salt Lake City Council prepares to vote next week on raising the sales tax rate for an ambitious downtown revitalization project, perhaps the largest stakeholder in the urban core is carefully watching the proceedings.

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not have a financial stake in the Smith Entertainment Group’s proposal for a sports, entertainment, culture and convention district, which includes renovating the Delta Center to accommodate the new Utah Hockey Club along with the Utah Jazz. But the church does have 'a shared interest with other stakeholders in the community' and in having 'a vibrant downtown.'

“'We will be neighbors. We are neighbors today. The entertainment district that they’ve talked about runs parallel to Temple Square and so of course we have an interest in what happens there. But we think it’s an exciting proposition and there’s a lot of interest in what they’re doing,' Bishop L. Todd Budge, second counselor in the church’s Presiding Bishopric, told the Deseret News in an interview."