From Fr. John and The Parish Hall Building Committee
Celebrating the Completion of the
Education and Ministry Wing of the Parish Hall,
Casting a Vision for Our Common Future
Paul presents our Vision for the Future to a standing room only group in the refurbished Battin Room after the 9:15 service.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
We had a wonderful Open House Sunday, celebrating the completion of the renovation of the Education & Ministry Wing of the Parish Hall. Building Committee Chair Paul Costello presented after all three services, sharing our vision for the renovation of the rest of the complex, built in stages in 1952, 1956 and 1970. The worn rooms have become new, and just in the past few weeks have been used for meetings by Alanon, the Deanery Clergy, our Women's group, Children's Chapel and next week Sunday Adult Ed begins.
A Sunday School class meets in the refurbished Nicole Marie Room Sunday, September 24.
Our Parish Hall is our Center for Mission and Ministry. Most parishioners do not realize how busy our Parish Hall Facility is during the week.
We are a community center for AA, NA, Alanon, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, a local soccer club, a quilting group, and other organizational meetings and dinners sponsored by parishioners. The Parish Hall is home to Saint John's Parish ministry as well, women's and men's group meetings, ministry committee
Our Newly-renovated Music Room.
meetings, choir and music ministry, storage for outreach food, youth group, Sunday School and adult education. And many parishioners have taken advantage of the opportunity to use the James-McKean Hall, which we refurbished in 2012 for about $200,000, for personal events for wedding & baby showers or birthday & anniversary dinners. What's more, now that both the James-KcKean Hall and the Battin Room are improved, we have the space for dignified weddings and funerals, which require not only the Church building, but support space for meals, wakes and bridal parties to change.
Our next phase of construction (Phase II) includes a new, beautiful, accessible bathroom complex that increases the number of toilets for the building. It will be placed in the current courtyard, with the bathroom entrance in the hall off the Battin Room. The existing bathrooms will be removed.
Our Flaws. Parish Hall handicapped accessibility is a problem. Only the back parking lot entrance has a wheelchair-accessible door and the correct ramp. The main entrance closest to the church has two small, difficult-to-operate doors, and its ramped entrance is too steep and slippery in the winter ice. One parishioner fell there. When I was in a wheelchair with a torn calf a year ago, it was a long way around the building to the good entrance. Have you ever tried to use the bathrooms in a wheelchair? I did, and its not a good experience.
While there may be only a few wheelchair users, the same accessible designs are needed for people with canes and walkers. We have more to do to be a truly welcoming parish facility. Upgrading the current bathrooms is not possible as there is not enough space and there's too much concrete to jackhammer. So we believe that upgrading current entrances and building new bathrooms is the best course.
A computer-generated (CG) picture of our design for re-worked ramps and entrances to the Parish Hall facility.
Finally, the "other" parish hall entrance, the "choir" entrance by the front of the church (left in the picture), has no ramp, although it now has the correct door. It was originally designed as a dedicated special entrance to the Battin Room, Choir Room and classrooms, so when there is an event in the James-McKean Hall, the left entrance could be used so people don't have to walk through the middle of a dinner event. To make this "choir" entrance accessible, we have re-designed the concrete ramps and steps in the front of the offices (photo above), so that people can conveniently walk or wheel from the parking lot to either of these accessible parish hall entrances. This entrance accessibility ramping is planned for Phase III.
The Courtyard. The courtyard was a truly beautiful idea, created in 1970 as part of the design of the office and education addition. The problem is that the courtyard is mostly unusable for meeting or gathering space, since it is either too hot, or too cold, or too rainy for planned meetings. The open space overheats the offices, and the water drainage issues from the courtyard's open space cause the foundation walls to leak in the basement Sunday School, destabilizing the walls and peeling the plaster. After years of planning and designing with our architects, we have developed a plan that uses the courtyard as the location for new construction to improve the Parish Hall.
In this CG picture, our current Hall is shown with new white doors (where the current windows are) into the new meeting room built in the current courtyard. This room will serve as an adjacent buffet room or a meeting & classroom space.
Our Vision. Phase II of our Vision to improve our 1970 facility is to roof over the courtyard and place three rooms there: A modern bathroom complex, a new childcare facility and a new meeting & buffet room. The handicapped-accessible ADA-Compliant bathrooms will be located closest to the Battin Room, and building them in the courtyard is cost-efficient because new plumbing and waste lines are easily installed there, close to the sewage and plumbing lines located in the nearby boiler room. There is little concrete demolition needed to remove the slate, whereas if we tried to upgrade the current bathrooms, the concrete demolition required through the existing concrete floors would be prohibitive! The number of toilets will increase because of the extra interior space that the courtyard provides.
Childcare. Next to the bathrooms, a new childcare room will be built for our
Our dream includes a new, larger childcare room, with sink and toy storage placed in the center of the current courtyard. This allows the current offices to be re-designed, with a larger main office with space for printing projects.
growing young families (CG picture above). Larger than the current childcare room, it will have room for play space, parent/infant rocking-chair(s), a changing table and a hand wash sink. Removing the old childcare room will allow us, in Phase III, to enlarge the main office, with space for visitors! There will also be more-private offices for the Rector and Ass't Rector.
This new large multi-purpose meeting room will be located in the current courtyard, adjacent to the the James-McKean Hall. The doors to the Hall are pictured on the right. The left-rear door provides access to the Kitchen hallway and there is another door off the office hallway!
Multipurpose Meeting Room. The third room to be placed in the courtyard is a multi-purpose meeting room. It will have two large passage doors into the James-Mckean Hall, so it can be used as a convenient buffet room or extra table seating space for a dinner in the hall. To compliment buffet use, there is also a door to the kitchen hallway for food service and for access to that part of the building. This room can also be used as breakout space for a Parish Hall event, as overflow space by closed-circuit TV, or as a spacious meeting room by closing the doors to the James-McKean Hall. It is excellent space for Bible-Study, group meetings or for a Sunday School class held upstairs in a handicapped accessible area to accommodate a mobility impaired student.
The Parish Hall Building showing the profile of our new roof with a cut-away view showing the second floor attic space for future expansion. Our thanks to parishioner Rocky Bassick for creating the CG images used in this presentation, based on the plans of our architect, Patrick McFadden.
Room for Expansion. The CG rendering at right shows how the roof that will cover the court-yard fits in with the current roof-line of the building. Also shown is a cut-away of the attic space, currently for HVAC machinery and storage. The attic space which will house the mechanical and HVAC equipment is being designed so that it can be turned into usable functional space in the future if and when it is needed, and two stairways being installed in Phase II will make this possible in the future.
The recently renovated Battin Room
was part of the $221,000 Phase I.
The Cost. As we shared in Sunday's presentation, the total cost of the three phases of this project is about 1.1 mi
llion dollars. Of this, $600,000 has been received or pledged, with $221,000 spent on the Phase I, Ministry & Education Wing renovations just completed and about $225,000 in the bank. Phase II will include the enclosure of the Courtyard and the addition of new bathrooms, a childcare room and a multi-purpose room, as well as and the installation of a new kitchen dish washing and storage room in the place of the current kitchen area bathrooms. Phase II is estimated to cost $650,000 with construction anticipated to begin in the Spring of 2018 with completion by November 1, 2018. Phase III is the time for renovating the parish offices, reconfiguring the front ramps, stairs and entrances for easier parish hall accessibility, and demolishing the old front-entrance bathrooms to provide a spacious welcome area. Phase III is estimated to cost $250,000 and we hope to complete that phase in the Spring of 2020.
Fr. John
From the Parish Hall Capital Campaign Team: Our Vision for the Saint John's Church Parish Hall Education and Ministry Center
Sunday's Schedule
Sunday Worship Schedule: Worship at 8, 9:15 & 11!
8:00 a.m. - Holy Eucharist Rite I
8:55 am - Coffee Hour
9:15 a.m. - Family Eucharist, A Child-Friendly Worship Service with Children's Chapel
10:15 am - Coffee Hour, Sunday School and Adult Education
11 am: Traditional Holy Eucharist, Rite II,
On Line Calendar
Check out our Church Google Calendar byclicking here. We work hard to keep it up to date, so please check it regularly! If you'd like to see how much our Saint John's Parish Hall rooms are used, view the calendar!
