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LDS Church Donates Wall Mansion to University of Utah

Dan Bammes
The historic Wall Mansion at 411 E South Temple in Salt Lake City

  The University of Utah will become the new owner of the historic Wall Mansion at 4th East and South Temple in Salt Lake City.

The Wall Mansion was built in the 1880’s and renovated by mining millionaire Enos Wall early in the 20th Century.  In the 1960’s, it became the home of  LDS Business College, but it’s been empty since the college moved to the Triad Center  in 2006.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is donating the mansion and other buildings on the site to the University of Utah.  Jason Perry, the U’s vice-president for government relations, says the plan is to use them for all kinds of public and private events.

“Even though we’re so close to downtown," Perry tells KUER, "we have been wanting to have a presence that made us feel even closer, that had a presence with the business community and with the legislature and with the state.  And so we were viewing this building very much like the university’s embassy to downtown.”

The mansion will also house the University’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research and the Center for Public Policy and Administration. 

One of the two classroom wings on the site will be torn down, and the university plans to spend about seven million dollars on renovations to make the mansion look much as it did in 1910.  The work could be finished by the fall of next year.

The university board of trustees has accepted the donation, but the Utah Board of Regents and the state building board still have to approve it.

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