"A great new building for a great new century," said President Gordon B. Hinckley, describing the Church's new Conference Center.
It is "built as well as we know how to build in this season of the history of the world and I hope that it will stand for as long as the earth lasts and serve the purpose of the Kingdom of God," said President Hinckley."The voices which speak in this hall, this enlarged hall, will be carried across the world to the nations of the earth as this Church rolls on and continues to grow from its present membership . . . to numbers beyond our ability to calculate and to places beyond our ability to guess at this time," he said.
Though not complete, the magnificent structure will be functional for the Church's 170th annual General Conference April 1-2.
The use of a meetinghouse under construction is not without precedent. The October 1867 General Conference was held in the Tabernacle during its construction, thus carrying on a link from the past to the present.
Like the historic Tabernacle and Assembly Hall buildings on Temple Square, the Conference Center will serve primarily as a central meeting place of worship and of instruction from Church leaders. Because of this, the main auditorium has been designed and built acoustically for the spoken word.
Church leaders hope that once it is completed and opened to the public, the Conference Center will also serve as a place of gathering for the community, where individuals can find quiet moments of peace and tranquility.
"This new building is a means by which we can strengthen our members and proclaim the divinity of Jesus Christ to the world," said Presiding Bishop H. David Burton. "It will allow many more people to personally attend conference than could ever be housed in the Tabernacle."
Following are facts about the Conference Center:
The structure is 1.5 million square feet (including parking) -- about 40 times the size of the Tabernacle.
The center will seat 21,000 plus all the General Authorities and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The small theater in the Conference Center will seat 900.
It houses four levels of underground parking with 1,300 parking spaces.
An estimated 116,000 total cubic yards of concrete were poured for the building. Stacking one cubic yard (3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet) on top of another, one would have a column 66 miles high. Also one cubic yard being approximately equal to 202 U.S. gallons, Legacy Constructors poured almost 23.5 million gallons of concrete for the building.
The roof contains 4 acres of landscaping with fountains, waterfalls, trees, planters, flowers and a 3-acre meadow complete with irrigation systems.
The building includes translation facilities for up to 60 languages simultaneously, a facility second only to that of the United Nations.
It contains 50,000 miles of electrical wiring, enough to circle the earth two times, and 780 miles of electrical conduit.
There are 13 passenger elevators, 12 escalators, and three service and stage elevators inside the center.
A custom organ will be built in the Conference Center from 130 ranks of pipes, totaling 7,667 pipes.
Including the parking lot, the structure covers the entire 10-acre city block.
Approximately 1,100 employees were on the site during peak construction schedule; more than 80 subcontractors were involved in the project.