PROVO, Utah (AP) - A wealthy Mormon businessman has an ambitious plan to buy a Provo neighborhood and create a community of tiny, environmentally sustainable dwellings based on the teachings of church founder Joseph Smith.

Some neighbors are not happy about David Hall’s plan to own the entire neighborhood.

Hall, 69, is working to solve engineering challenges to make parts of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ utopian society a reality, The Salt Lake Tribune reported (https://bit.ly/1ZUBWvW). His vision is based on Smith’s 1833 Plat of the City of Zion.

Hall is heir to a family business that makes synthetic diamonds. He has funneled a large portion of his wealth into the project. He owns 20 homes in a Provo neighborhood though the company NewVistas and its many subsidiaries. Hall has said he intends to create a high-tech, sustainable community.

“The concept of single-family homes is an urban-sprawl disaster,” Hall said. “Let’s bring food, industry, commerce, education, play - everything together so we can walk. Our cars can be simply something that we use occasionally instead of every day.”

Neighbors planned a rally for Thursday to protest the plan.

Rebecca England, whose 82-year-old mother lives in Pleasant View, the neighborhood Hall is snapping up, said he plan is “bizarre.” She and others are asking Hall to put homes back on the market.

R. Paul Evans, head of the Pleasant View Neighborhood Council, said NewVistas caused many homeowners in the neighborhood to question their futures. When they purchased single-family homes, they expected the area to stay that way.

“We’re saying, ‘OK, you may have picked up some homes here and there, but your progress in the future is going to be adamantly opposed,’” Evans said. “We can either succumb to these pressures, or we can say, ‘We’re better than this.’”

In Hall’s community, residents would give up ownership of private property and have about 200 square feet of private space each. Green spaces, basketball courts, swimming pools and other communal areas would be shared.

“No matter how rich you are,” Hall said, “you can’t own more space.”

Engineers with NewVistas are seeking more efficient building materials, hyper-modular dwelling designs, soundproofing for shared walls, low-water LED toilets tied to on-site waste-treatment facilities and new techniques for high-yield food production. Building in Pleasant View could be realized within 10 to 15 years, Hall said.

In Provo, neighborhood activists say they have teamed up with residents in rural Vermont, where Hall also has purchased more than 2,000 acres near Smith’s birthplace of Sharon. Hall wants to acquire up to 3,000 more acres in Vermont with the same community-building in mind, he said.

“We’ve consumed enough space,” Hall said. “Let’s take the space we have used already and redo it.”

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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, https://www.sltrib.com

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