Greetings in Christ!
I am overjoyed to share with you a sort of timeline for our Church renovation project. As you may recall, we were given a plan for a $4.8 million renovation in 2017, but realized that we would not able to get that amount. So, we redesigned the plan in order to try to fit our budget of $3.5 million.
As I stated a couple months ago, we haven’t revealed that new plan yet because we don’t know if we can afford it. We are in a time of waiting so that the architects can put the new plan to ink and send that plan to the contractors to get estimates on the cost of the project.
What I want to do now is share with you our expected timeline for the future. There are three elements to the timeline:
One: The houses on Orchard Street. We need to demo those houses because maintaining them is so very expensive and their absence will give us room for more parking.
Two: Fr. Bush large hall needs to be worked on a bit in order to prepare for the nine months or so we will need to worship there. Our work will focus on the sound system and some aesthetic issues.
Three: The Church itself. With those elements in mind, here is what we hope will happen.
March 14th | Asbestos Testing in church ceiling and in the houses to be demolished March 20th Overhead electric shut down in the houses
March 28th | Gas shut off in the houses End of March Tree removal, clear out of properties where houses will be demolished
April 8th | Receive project estimate from contractor April 10th Holy Family Building Committee meeting
April 11th | Fr. Joe will make handout for our bulletin on the 14th (Palm Sunday) that hopefully tells us we can afford the new plan. (Come, Holy Spirit!)
April 11th | Bishop Earl’s Diocesan Consultors Meeting – This is a committee whose approval we need in order to continue. Good news? I’m on that committee. 🙂
April 16th | Diocesan Building Committee – This is another committee whose approval we need in order to build. Bad news? I’m not on that committee. 🙂
April 16th | Fr. Joe will make bulletin article for Easter Sunday on our project, informing us of progress and approvals.
Town Hall / Informational Meetings | Here we are a little stuck. We want to show everyone the plans (assuming we can afford them!) as soon as we know it’s a go.
The week after Easter is pretty full for our Church Hall: It is booked solid with the wonderful 55 and Over Garage Sale! It may be that we end up having a couple town halls that week in the church itself; setting them up as one morning town hall and one evening town hall in order to catch everyone we can. I’ll keep you up dated.
Mid-April | House demolition begins
Summer | Address the Hall, prioritized by budget – sound, ceiling and lights
September | START THE RENOVATION!!!
Some Unscheduled things we’ll need to do:
• Arrange meetings with city for approvals of revised plan.
• Finish gathering bids and project for a new sound system in the Parish Hall.
• Finish gathering ideas, info and bids for lights and ceiling in Parish Hall.
Random worrisome things to pray about:
• Asbestos disposal/removal: we are waiting to see how much asbestos abatement is going to cost for our Church ceiling and in the houses to be demolished.
• Disposal of house debris after demo: when the houses are demolished, we have to take the debris to a landfill and such a thing is surprisingly expensive.
• Another key thing that we are working on is finding out how much money will we have in our Witness to Hope diocesan account and Restoring the Temple savings account on Sept. 1st, when we hope to begin construction of the Church.
fjk