Before being razed to make way for a soon-to-be-constructed new and larger Anchorage Alaska Temple, the Brayton meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had its furniture and furnishings removed and repurposed in a gesture of goodwill spanning more than 400 miles across Alaska.
The meetinghouse’s curtains, trim, finished wood and wheelchair ramp went to a children’s theater that burned down three years ago in Kenai, a 150-mile drive south of the temple grounds. And pews, chairs and the basketball rims and backboards from the building’s cultural hall were collected for a new recreation center for the community of Nenana, more than 300 miles to the north.
On Saturday, Feb. 17, individuals representing more than 25 faith and civic organizations came to haul off materials from the old meetinghouse, to be used in religious and community locations in and around Anchorage and beyond.
Called by locals as the Brayton meetinghouse because of its location at 13111 Brayton Drive, the building serves as the Anchorage Alaska Stake Center. It sits just northwest of the Anchorage temple, sharing a dual-use parking lot on the 5.4-acre temple grounds.
Sheldon and Christine Fisher coordinated assigning the materials to be donated, patterning their effort to one done nearly four years ago, as Latter-day Saints helped remove materials and furnishings from the Yuba City California Stake Center prior to its demolition in favor of the Feather River California Temple.
“[We have] a lot of friends in the community who do good things within their own congregation, and by helping them, we knew it would help the faith and the building of the community,” said Christine Fisher in a report recently published on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
“The response was overwhelming. They were just so grateful. And we are so grateful that they’re taking it. I know it just continues to bless the community, that this chapel will live on through these other organizations.”
After its fire three years ago, the Alaska Children’s Institute for the Performing Arts has been crowdsourcing materials and funds to rebuild. Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Peter Micciche, who is involved with the theater, helped gather the curtains, trim, wood and ramp from the Brayton meetinghouse.
“These materials are a godsend,” he said. “What looks like not much here will save us tens of thousands of dollars and will be put to work enriching the lives of young people and giving them a purpose for years to come.”
Meanwhile, Nenana Mayor Jos Verhagen spoke of the new community recreation center where the pews, chairs and basketball hoops were headed. “We’ve got long, dark winters with not a lot of activities for kids,” he said. “This will give them something fun to do.”
Cabinets, stoves, chairs and other items were claimed by Anchorage’s New Hope Baptist Church, with Pastor Wilbert Mickens recalling a partnership with the Church of Jesus Christ going back 17 years and how his son played basketball with members of the Church.
“We are here to see what we can do not only to help our church but our organization, the Alaska Baptist Resource Network, which is formerly known as the Southern Baptism Convention,” he said. “What we get today will not only help our church but all of the 122 churches of the Southern Baptist denomination in Alaska.”
Osama Abaza of the Islamic Community Center of Anchorage saw the day’s donations as the start of a great collaboration. “The idea of sharing physical things as we do today [facilitates] trust between the communities,” he said. “Hopefully we can contribute to the Church in the future.”
Mary Anger is the project manager for the First United Methodist Church’s new worker-owned cooperative preschool, providing much-needed daycare for families living and working in downtown Anchorage.
“We’ve got so many wonderful things. And not only will that save on our budget, but also it’s ecologically sound,” Anger said. “And it’s a really good partnership that the Church has offered the community. It’s goodwill, and [the materials] get to be repurposed and reused.”
In January 2023, the First Presidency announced plans to resize, reconstruct and relocate the Anchorage Alaska Temple, with the new house of the Lord to be built on the site of the adjacent Anchorage Alaska Stake Center.
The 6,800-square-foot Anchorage Alaska Temple was dedicated in January 1999, operating for four years before being closed for renovations and expansion. The 10-month project increased the building’s size by 75% to its current 11,937 square feet.
With the latest announced reconstruction, the temple’s square footage will increase to approximately 30,000 square feet — an increase of more than 150% from the temple’s current size and well more than four times its original size.
The reconstruction project is expected to begin later this year and be finished by the summer of 2026. Once the new temple is completed and dedicated, the current house of the Lord will be decommissioned, with a new meetinghouse to be built on the existing temple location.
