I realize that Joseph Smith is a venerated figure among Mormons, having found those [View all]

[cali]

golden tablets and talked with the angel Moroni and all. I'm not claiming Smith was a huckster, even though it's easy to interpret that story in such a way. Maybe he was just plumb nuts. In any case, he founded the Mormon religion. I don't want to mock Mormons. I don't suppose their beliefs are any more ridiculous than a lot of religious beliefs, but honestly, this guy is fucking insane. I can't imagine Vermont's stringent land use laws will accommodate his dream, but a billionaire with a determined agenda that flies directly in the face of what a place values, is still annoying.

Vermont Doesn't Want a Mormon Techno-Utopia

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In 1954, Tracy Hall got sick of waiting around for the earth to spit out diamonds. He figured out how to press them into existence. David Hall, his son, is sick of waiting around for the earth to spit out idyllic communities, so he’s using his fortune and his father’s high-pressure strategy to try to build them. The man who built and sold Novatek, a company that supplies diamonds for use in oil drilling, is scooping up land around the world, shelling out millions in the hopes that he can finally build a Mormon techno-utopia.

We’re going to need to backtrack. Two centuries ago, Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Along with countless other apparent divine revelations, Smith offered his followers a vision of an ideal community, the Mormon utopia. He called it the Plat of Zion and he detailed its design and order. It was not just Smith’s ideal community; it was the ideal community. These towns would be agrarian, self-sufficient, pious and multitudinous. Each would accommodate 20,000 Mormons on a one-square-mile grid. Smith wanted his dream communities to “fill up the world,” but he failed to build even one.

Hall intends to use Smith’s plans to turn the prophet’s birthplace, Sharon, Vermont into a Plat. He’s already purchased about a thousand acres of idyllic Vermont farmland for upwards of $3.6 million and he’s not stopping there. He wants 5,000 acres to house 20,000 residents and he’s planning to spend a quarter of a billion dollars to make his NewVista development a reality.

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In Vermont, people take pride in the evidence of this process. Most towns aren’t on grids, and covered bridges from the 19th century have signs that read “Two Dollars Fine for Driving on This Bridge Faster than a Walk.” The Green Mountain State’s redneck and hippie communities can agree on this narrative, if not much else.

This character — along with cheap, abundant, isolated land — makes Vermont an attractive state for outsiders. Utopians have long seen opportunity and freedom in the state’s rolling hills. Beginning in the 1830s, acolytes from various religions, including Mormonism, came to establish colonies, the vast majority of which were eventually dismantled or relocated. The trend continued through the 20th century as social and political revolutionaries followed in the devout colonists’ tracks. In the 1960s and ‘70s, disaffected free thinkers nationwide banded together and headed for those alluring hills. Vermont was overrun with communes.

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These stringent policies are not the only aspects of Hall’s ideas infuriating would-be neighbors, who have a website dedicated to stopping his project. He’s behaved rashly. He’s buying up acres upon acres of open land in order to build prefabbed developments that won’t look anything like farmhouses or barns. He’s trying to bring 20,000 people to a town with a population of 1,500. To put that in perspective, Vermont’s state capital, Montpelier, has only about 8,000 people. “Coming in with a development at that scale is pretty antithetical to the whole spirit of Vermont,” Jacobs says.

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https://www.inverse.com/article/19500-david-hall-newvistas-mormon-utopia-sharon-vermont

To give the church credit, it has officially come out against Mr. Hall's plans for both Sharon, VT and Provo, Utah.

August 20, 2016 - 4:59pm
Mormon church opposes plan for futuristic, green communities in Utah, Vermont

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/mormon-church-opposes-plan-futuristic-green-communities-utah-vermont