The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is moving forward with plans to renovate and expand its Kona temple.
The Utah-based church is proposing to expand the size of its current 9,128-square-foot Kona Hawaii Temple building on Kalani Street by 35% to 12,325 square feet. In addition, plans call for increasing the height of the temple’s steeple from 73 feet to 87 feet, 7 inches as well as extensive interior and exterior renovations.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) tentatively plans to close the temple — one of only two in Hawaii — in October 2023 for the project. The hope is to complete work in under two years and reopen the site to parishioners by the end of 2025, but those dates are not set in stone.
“That’s the unfortunate thing, that the temple is going to be shutdown during renovation,” said Corey Daniels, who is representing the church in its design review with the county that begins this week. “We don’t know when it’ll start exactly — we’re just barely starting discussions with the Kailua Village Design Commission and then also the county. We’ve still got quite a bit of work to do before we know we can actually submit for building permits and what not.”
The Kailua Village Design Commission, which provides recommendations to the Hawaii County planning director, is set to take up the church’s plans during its meeting Tuesday in Kailua-Kona.
“Really, the expansion isn’t so much because of the growing congregation — even though that is the case — it’s more, there’s a renovation that was planned for the inside and outside of the building just to kind of spruce it up. While this is going on there was just this desire to make the baptistry area a little more functional with a bigger laundry room, bigger boys and girls locker rooms,” Daniels explained, continuing,” it’s just to make it more functional — it’s not really going to increase the capacity of the building, just make it more functional.”
The Kona Hawaii Temple was dedicated in January 2000, making it the second in the state. The first temple, located in Laie, Oahu, was dedicated in 1919, and was the first LDS temple opened outside the mainland U.S.
According to the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, there are nearly 75,000 members of the church, which equates to about 5% of Hawaii’s population. The church’s first missionaries arrived in the islands in 1850 and by 2000 more than 55,000 members resided in Hawaii.
Temples are special places of worship, known as a “House of the Lord.” The primary purpose of temples is for members to participate in sacred ceremonies such as marriages and proxy baptisms.
Regular meetinghouses (chapels) are used for Sabbath day worship services and weekday activities such as youth groups, socials, service projects, and sporting events. They are open to the general public and visitors are welcome to observe or respectfully participate, according to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ website.
During the planned work, parishioners needing to use the temple will have to travel to Oahu or the mainland, Daniels said. The closure only affects the temple; regular worship services, as well as community functions like the Blood Bank of Hawaii’s collection events, will continue on the campus in Kailua-Kona.
