Tycoon plans heavens on Earth
A librarian was intrigued when she came across a series of land purchases around her small town in rural Vermont. Some 900 acres of farms and fields had been bought by a Utah multi-millionaire named David Hall.
When Nicole Antal rang him, he explained everything. On the edge of Sharon, her town of 1350 residents, he planned to build a utopian metropolis for 20,000 people, based on plans that the founder of the Mormon Church had drawn up, in 1833, for a new Zion.
He said that 150 engineers were working on the project, designing homes, communal buildings and transport systems. And this was only the beginning: he hoped to found 1000 similarly dense cities for 20 million people.
Soon, Hall arrived in Vermont and circulated, addressing home owners and explaining his plans. He had chosen the state, and the town of Sharon, because it was the birthplace of Joseph Smith, prophet and founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints.
Just over 600,000 people live in the state, though Hall plans to change that. ‘‘Two thirds of Vermont would be wilderness and one third would be farms that are occupied, and you’d have 20 million people,’’ he said, according to one report of a planning meeting.
His father had been part of a team that invented the synthetic diamond, an advance crucial to the microchip industry. Hall turned his father’s business into a $100 million company, which he sold last year. Some of the proceeds have been used to start the NewVistas, a foundation that aimed to build a network of sustainable cities, loosely based on Joseph Smith’s ‘‘Plat of Zion’’.
Hall told Bloomberg Businessweek magazine that he had stumbled upon this plan while researching Mormon history. According to the scripture, the City of Zion was constructed by Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah.
Philip Barlow, a professor of history and religious studies at Utah State University, described this as one of the most powerful stories in the Mormon scriptures. ‘‘Many Mormons would take that as a literal story,’’ he said. ‘‘Others would say it’s an archetype or a mythic image.’’
Smith drew up a plan for how such a city might be constructed after he and his followers moved west. According to the scripture, Zion had been built at a time when Enoch faced many enemies, and giants walked the earth.
Hall may need such perseverance, for his plans have prompted a horrified response.
‘‘What would Joseph Smith know about the needs for sustainable development in the 21st century?’’ John Echeverria, a law professor, said.
Antal said she had enjoyed her conversations with Hall but disag- reed with him and was very worried. ‘‘On the long-term plan, I believe it could happen,’’ she said. In Sharon, ‘‘only 120 people usually vote at town meeting. Two hundred people moving in the community would completely change those boards, and would easily elect people in favour of this development.’’