Mormon tycoon wants to create hi-tech utopian cities across America
DAVID Hall has lots of money, lots of ambition and perhaps most importantly, lots of dedication to create the perfect Mormon community.
A WEALTHY religious businessman who made his money through synthetic diamonds is determined to build futuristic city utopias across the US based on the 1833 vision of his church’s founder.
David Hall has lots of money, lots of ambition and perhaps most importantly, lots of dedication to create the perfect Mormon community — the modern city of Zion.
In the past few years he has been buying up plots of land all over the country and quietly developing plans for what’s been dubbed as his sustainable Mormon techno-utopia.
He wants to create hi-tech, high density and completely sustainable mini cities that can be built in a tessellating pattern to sprawl across America’s plains where everything is within walking distance and motorised pods deliver supplies.
To understand what motivates the 69-year-old, you need to first understand the bizarre history of his faith.
Nearly two centuries ago, Joseph Smith founded the offshoot of Christianity called the Latter Day Saint movement. A majority of the faith’s adherents are Mormons — a word originally derived from the Book of Mormon, a religious text published by Smith which he claimed he translated from golden plates with help from God.
The church has 15 million members worldwide, about half of which live within the United States with the biggest population in the state of Utah.
The young religious movement has a rather tumultuous history. Smith preached polygamy and is believed to have taken more than 40 wives some as young as 14, and a few of whom were already married. When the US government cracked down on the practice in the late 1800s some Mormons — including the grandfather of former US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney — fled to Mexico.
In addition to multiple wives, Smith had a vision to create his ideal community. He called it the Plat of Zion and it was to be a small agrarian, self-sufficient and pious city filled with fellow Mormons.
He detailed his plan in documents he left behind but never managed to build a single city — and that’s where David Hall comes in.
“So I’ve taken those documents as kind of my foundational start and expanded,” he told Bloomberg.
“They were hoping to create a society that was good,” he said. So that’s his plan.
Hall’s father Tracy made huge sums of money from synthetic diamond drilling after figuring out a way to press diamonds into existence. It was one of the greatest, albeit little known, discoveries of the 20th century and made him immensely rich.
Now his son is pouring a lot of that money into the building of his religious utopia and says he is happy to “die broke”. In fact, he says he has already spent more than $130 million on the project.
So far he has managed to purchase more than 12,000 acres of land in a small community in Vermont near the birthplace of Smith, and has his heart set on the area becoming the first site outside of Utah for his sustainable dreamland.
The plans call for sprawling gardens, 48 basketball courts and 48 Olympic-size swimming pools.
Hall has more than 150 staff working on architecture and technology for the project who are drawing up plans on everything such as unique elevator systems, inventive waste management, super fast Wi-Fi and even something called toilet analytics to create futuristic bathrooms.
According to the website of Hall’s company, NewVistas, all parts of the community will be connected with “bi-level walkway-podways” that run in straight lines from hub to hub.
“The top level of the walkway-podway connects ‘people’ spaces, including live-work levels of standard buildings and above-ground levels of campus and market buildings. The bottom level of the walkway-podway connect production and warehouse areas,” it says.
“NewVista uses pods for transport of people with special needs and for delivering goods.”
While walking will be the main mode of transport for residents, bike riding and skateboarding will also be encouraged.
NOT EVERYONE IS HAPPY ABOUT HIS PLANS
The community in Vermont where Hall wants to build his city is made up of just 700 people and understandably they are very worried about the idea going forward.
“The guy just shows up with his money and takes over,” complained local resident Randy Leavitt.
“To me it doesn’t matter why he wants to come here in particular, but coming here is the wrong place,” Mr Leavitt told Bloomberg. “Maybe there’s no place for his development, maybe there’s lots of places I don’t know, but this one is certainly the wrong one.”
A community organisation called Stop NewVistas has been formed in Vermont to fight David Hall.
“We will not have our voices ignored, nor our lands misused in opposition to the will of our people, by the will of a single corporation,” the group says.
They have found unlikely support from the Mormon Church which this week denounced Hall’s plans.
The church has concerns about the communities affecting existing neighbourhoods and the longstanding relationships the religion has with those residents, spokesman Eric Hawkins said in a statement. The project is not associated with the church in any way, he said.
“The church makes no judgment about the scientific, environmental or social merits of the proposed developments,” Mr Hawkins said. “However, for a variety of reasons, we are not in favour of the proposal.”
Hall said he’s not surprised the church opposes his plans because he believes church leaders are not forward-thinking and worry about their image. Their stance allows him to tout that his communities are not influenced by the church and not designed to be Mormon enclaves, he said.
“I’m not running for office and I’m not trying to be a missionary, so I don’t care what people think,” he told the Associated Press. “I’m looking for long-term good.”
And long term it is — Hall’s plans are years away from reaching fruition in Utah and probably decades in Vermont.
Hall said Mormon officials have reached out to him, but he does not call back. He says he’s in good standing as a church member but does not want faith leaders telling him what to do.
Besides, he believes those who would be interested in his green living effort will be non-Mormons and says people of all faiths can join his hi-tech utopia.
“It’s all about getting to one-tenth of consumption we’re at now,” Hall said. “That’s not going to go over well with LDS (Latter Day Saint) people, because they’re consumers. They’re free enterprise and right wing, that’s what they’re at.”
- With AP
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