The planned Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) temple in Queen Creek is, in many respects, another chapter in the town’s explosive growth saga.
On Aug. 31, LDS officials announced the Queen Creek Arizona Temple will be located at the southeast corner of Ryan Road and Euell Drive, between Meridian Road to the west and Ironwood Road to the east, in the northeast part of town.
The 82,000-square-foot temple will be built on a 15.5-acre site, which will also include a meetinghouse and an accompanying ancillary building. No other details, such as projected costs and construction schedule, were divulged.
It will be a while before the temple, which was announced in 2024, becomes reality, explained Jennifer Wheeler, a spokeswoman for the church.
Next, renderings of the building will be released followed by a groundbreaking. Then comes construction, which generally takes two to three years.
Clearly, as Queen Creek has grown, so has the LDS, or Mormon, church.
A Queen Creek first
A 45-year-old Queen Creek native who was the first LDS child baptized in Queen Creek calls the temple “a wonderful blessing.”
Growing up in Queen Creek, “I never would have imagined (there would be a temple),” said Vice Mayor Bryan McClure, who’s held many LDS posts.
“We’ve seen such tremendous growth,” McClure said. “I am both grateful and excited. It will be such a great addition to the community.”
McClure was born when Queen Creek had just one LDS chapel – a brick building on Ellsworth Road it sold to Queen Creek to be used as Town Hall when it incorporated in 1989. The town’s initial population was about 2,500.
Town operations have dramatically outgrown that facility, which is now a community center.
Another LDS church, built on Chandler Heights Road west of Ellsworth Road, was the first in town to have a baptismal font.
McClure was baptized there at age 8, the earliest youth can be baptized in the church.
He remembers traveling to Gilbert to attend stake events because Queen Creek wasn’t big enough to support a stake, which is generally composed of six to 10 wards, or congregations.
From two to 14 stakes
Queen Creek had just added its second stake when Jason Bagley and his family moved to town in 2005. By then, the town had grown to about 20,000 residents.
The LDS growth has been just as impressive.
Queen Creek, which has an estimated 91,900 residents today, is now home to 14 LDS stakes that comprise 111 wards, which represent about 13% of LDS congregations in Arizona, according to Bagley, who is president of the Queen Creek North Stake.
Wards can have several hundred members, Bagley pointed out.
There are 24 LDS chapels across Queen Creek and San Tan Valley, McClure said.
Generally, three or four wards share one church building, conducting such activities as worship service and Sunday school in shifts throughout the day.
LDS leadership positions, such as those held by Wheeler, McClure and Bagley, are non-paid and viewed by members as a calling to serve the church.
The ‘temple effect’
The Queen Creek temple is “a sign of the maturity of the community and our continued development,” Bagley said. “Our faith communities are very robust.
“The Church puts extraordinary emphasis on the temples,” he continued. “Our faith believes that members are able to connect more in depth there with our God. It is meant to reflect glory, a place where we can communicate with God.”
That belief is the main driver behind the “temple effect,” wherein some communities the real estate market booms near an announced site of an LDS temple.
That happened in neighboring Gilbert, which was reeling from the 2008 Great Recession and real estate crash. Once plans for the temple were announced, new high-end houses that had sat vacant for years among south Gilbert alfalfa fields started selling and construction resumed.
A majestic temple’s beauty and well-groomed grounds can also be a catalyst for growth in nearby neighborhoods.
The jury is out on whether the Temple Effect will affect Queen Creek’s real estate market, which has slowed down some from the boom days, mostly due to higher interest rates and a slower economy.
The Queen Creek temple, along with future temples announced for Flagstaff and Yuma, will bring Arizona’s total to nine.
Three of those temples will be in the East Valley, forming a virtual triangle.
The state’s first temple is the Mesa Arizona Temple, about 25 miles north of both the Gilbert and Queen Creek sites. The Gilbert temple, at the southeast corner of Greenfield and Pecos roads, is about a dozen miles west of the Queen Creek site.
The Mesa edifice, dedicated in 1927, was the state’s only LDS temple for 75 years until a second one was opened in Snowflake in northeastern Arizona.
The future LDS temple speaks to Queen Creek’s history, said Mayor Julia Wheatley.
“The announcement of the Queen Creek Arizona Temple location is a historic and deeply meaningful moment for our community, honoring our pioneer heritage and the values of faith, family and service that have long been Queen Creek’s foundation,” Wheatley said in a prepared statement.
“This sacred place of worship will be a beautiful addition of peace and hope to our town and will bless members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints throughout our region for generations to come.”