Imagine T-shirt vendors on Temple Square, billboards in Monument Valley, fast-food restaurants on the Gettysburg battlefield or a commercial sponsorship of the Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor.

People would not stand for such defilement of historic sites.

But the foundation overseeing This Is The Place State Park is proposing just such a defilement to make the park more profitable. The park has been losing money for several years because of declining tourism and lack of promotion. In 2006, the Legislature voted to give it a $2 million boost, on top of its $800,000 annual contribution.

Ellis Ivory, chairman of This Is The Place Foundation, has proposed leasing 12 acres of park land for a three-story office building near Brigham Young's historic farm home. Other plans for saving the park's finances call for adding a train-ride attraction, paving the roads in Old Deseret Village and opening a Starbuck's franchise in the gift shop.

Kenyon Kennard, a former curator, has started a petition drive to stop such efforts and put the park under the management of historians rather than developers. He was joined by Utah Jazz owner Larry H. Miller, who correctly said that Ivory's plan would destroy the park's focus and its reason for being.

If This Is The Place were some kitschy roadside tourist trap, we wouldn't care what Ivory put in there. But this is a state park dedicated to preserving a highly significant piece of Utah history. The park commemorates the arrival of the Mormon pioneers into the valley in 1847 and their efforts to make roses blossom in a desert.

The park consists of the heroic "This Is The Place Monument" and Old Deseret Village, a collection of historic buildings that re-creates life in Salt Lake City before the advent of the railroad. The dirt roads and old buildings give visitors a taste of what the pioneers had to work with.

A three-story office building on the property is just plain wrong. And so are the other concepts. They represent not only an anachronism; they are an affront to the park's mission. They would act as a camel's nose under the tent. Eventually, we have no doubt, the park would be overrun with commercial development.

Come to think of it, it already would be.

While we understand the need for the park to make money to fulfill its mission, it should not be forced to sell its soul in the bargain.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A4.

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