At a public hearing on April 19, the board will take comment from citizens on a plan to lease 12 acres of the park for construction of a three-story office building and parking lot.

Ellis Ivory, chairman of a private foundation that operates the park for the state, maintains developing the parcel near the historic Brigham Young home is the best way to stabilize the park's finances. Last year, the Legislature bailed out the failing park with a $2 million emergency grant.

But local residents and a group calling itself Friends of This Is the Place oppose leasing open space to the University of Utah's ARUP Laboratories, along with other ideas to increase revenues at the reconstructed village that celebrates the Mormon pioneer experience.

The board could vote on the land-lease proposal at the public hearing April 19, or wait until its regular meeting the next day.

The meetings, scheduled for St. George, were moved to Salt Lake City because of local interest in the controversial land-lease deal, said Wendy Griffith, assistant to Natural Resources Department Director Mike Styler.

- Glen Warchol