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Report of the Building committee:
At the congregational meeting on March 8, the Building committee presented its recommendation on our sanctuary construction project. Our strategic plan initially envisioned a first floor sanctuary and welcome area, unfinished basement (to be finished later as a fellowship hall), and balcony. After developing that plan, the architect’s drawings resulted in a total estimated cost that would have been 4.2 million dollars (with anther 900K needed to finish the basement). The plan was slowly scaled back based on cost estimates to be a one floor sanctuary on a concrete slab with a welcome area and no balcony or basement. The sanctuary would seat 285 people with an estimated cost of 2.58 million dollars. The cost includes a number of expenses connected with permits and other government mandated items, as well as a fire suppression system, stormwater management, tie-in to the current building, and restoration of our stained glass windows. The sanctuary location remains in the front of the building. After the architects reviewed our options, they felt that this location permitted an optimal usage of the site (for future construction), alleviated some of our “flow” issues in the building, and kept us from running over our current septic fields. Our main issue now is financing. We have contacted seven lenders about a construction loan and none are willing to let us borrow more than about 1.5 million dollars at this time. This has to do with the current economic situation, the fact that we have very little cash on hand, and no one will consider the church property as collateral because no one wants the bad PR of (potentially) foreclosing on a church. To date, we have received over $120,000 in contributions towards our Faith for the Future campaign. This is about 21% of our three year goal (and that is awesome). At this time, here is our approach as a Building committee: · We will continue to research other lending alternatives in the hope of proceeding sooner rather than later. · We will continue to invite you to give to the Faith for the Future campaign. Lenders have told us that the more we have in available cash as a downpayment, the more likely we are to get our needed construction loan. · We will continue discussions with our architects, as needed, to refine our project. We will also continue to do research and receive proposals in other areas, specifically with our stained glass windows, to develop more clearly defined cost estimates. We appreciate the trust you have placed in the Building committee to lead us this far. We wish there was better news at this point on the financing side but we will continue to keep the congregation informed as to our findings in the coming days.
Congregational Meeting November 14, 2010 (or see below....click on each slide, then the right arrow for more slides)
Additional Documents: Information Meeting Power Point (or see below....click on each slide, then the right arrow for more slides) Exterior Elevation (Adobe PDF)
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