The site location of Tallahassee Florida Temple has been announced and an exterior rendering released for what will be the third temple in the state of Florida for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Announced less than a year ago by President Russell M. Nelson, the temple will be built on a 4.97-acre site located at 2440 Papillon Way in Tallahassee, the largest city in the Florida Panhandle and the state’s capital. The site is to include a distribution center.
The rendering depicts a temple — still in the planning and design stages and with no groundbreaking date yet set — projected to be approximately 29,000 square feet, with a center spire.
The location announcement and rendering release were made Tuesday, Jan. 12, on Newsroom.
Florida is home to more than 160,000 members in 33 stakes, 267 congregations and four missions. The new temple joins the Orlando Florida Temple (dedicated in 1994) and the Fort Lauderdale Florida Temple (2014). Tallahassee currently is in the Orlando temple district, with that temple some 260 miles away.
Announced on April 5, 2020, by President Nelson, the temple was one of among eight new temples identified in the closing session of the April 2020 general conference.
On the day of the announcement, Tallahassee native Shannon Havlicak Grondel remembers the four-hour drive from to the Orlando Florida Temple as being a defining element of her childhood.
“While such a trek is minuscule in comparison to those of Saints around that world whose journey can only be made by boat, plane, or countless hours by train — it was nonetheless an obstacle to more regular temple attendance.”
Havlicak Grondel was thrilled Sunday to learn her hometown would be counted among the world’s “temple cities.” “I love Tallahassee — I was raised there and so much of who I am I owe to that small town and it is beautiful to think that Heavenly Father and his prophets saw fit to place a temple there,” she said.
“It reminds me that Heavenly Father is mindful of each of us individually just as he is mindful of a small town like Tallahassee among the many large and bustling cities of Florida.”
