Raising the Roof Capital Campaign

Holy Cross has been undertaking a capital campaign to remodel and expand our facilities, including a larger worship space (nave), gathering space (narthex and kitchen), joining our church building with our education building. The capital campaign is called Raising the Roof, and has so far raised $1.42 million.

For more background, please visit our Raising the Roof History page.

Current News

Spring 2011. The bulk of the construction is finished and now a Landscaping Committee is vetting bids to complete the landscaping. The goal is to have all installed by Easter.

Site Work Is Complete.

Raising the Roof? let us rather say – “How Firm a Foundation.”

by Robert Gidley

“It’s all about infrastructure,” said Fr. Jim. “We are getting all the infrastructure in place for the entire master plan. It’s not just phase one, it’s really things that are going to be in phase two and three! There are no walls going up in this stage of the build.”

“But first, I want to offer thanks to everybody who’s been a part of this project or donated to it—and that’s a lot of people!” said Jim. “Special kudos go to Joe Trujillo who is a member of Holy Cross with 27 years of construction management experience. He’s been out here dozens of hours a week working for the benefit of Holy Cross. He’s our main interface with the contractor.

“I also want to thank Bob Hatheway for his recent work, and Kelvie Comer, the chair of the building committee, and Dave Worley and Steve Van Til and really, many, many other people who have been chugging away behind the scenes.”

The construction work this summer has cost about $970,000, plus an additional $350,000 in “soft costs,” which include designs and permit fees for the entire project, including buildings which have not yet been built.

“It’s important to point out that we wouldn’t even be having this conversion about the construction without the generosity and faithfulness of this congregation,” said Jim. “Daring to dream and then then pledging and then giving. This entire project is a testament to the faith of the congregation.”

By far the largest portion of the construction cost has been for the storm water vault. This vault, which can hold 650,000 gallons of storm water, does the work of 3.7 acres of old growth forest. When it rains, all the rainwater is diverted to the storm water vault, which slowly releases it back into the water table.

“It’s an artificial kidney in the ground,” said Jim, “We could pave our entire property and turn it into one giant slab of asphalt and that vault could still handle a 100 year storm event. It’s a huge structure. But it will never, ever wear out. We’ll have to clean it every few years. Hire a truck to come and suck the goo out of the bottom and that’s it. It has no moving parts.”

“It’s the right thing to do for the environment,” concluded Jim.

Other items that got added during construction were utilities and a connection to the city sewer system. The house used as the church offices used to be on well water, which wasn’t safe to drink. It is now on the city water system and you can now drink the water from the faucet. The septic system used by the house has been replaced by a connection to the city sewer system.

Although the church was on the city sewer system, the connection required using a sewage lift station to pump the sewage uphill across the neighbor’s property.

“It was a wretched sewage lift station,” said Jim, “It was on its last legs. One of the pipes inside it had burst last year, and it was operating on only one of its two pumps. As soon as the work started in the parking lot, the vibrations of the machinery disintegrated the aging pipes.”

The new sewer connection is gravity fed, so the sewage flows downhill. Essentially, gravity has replaced the sewage lift station.

“And gravity has no moving parts,” Jim pointed out.

Electrical conduit for all the future builds was also brought in, and the size of the gas main was increased to serve whatever build we ever do on the property.

Once the big parking lot is completed (and it’s going to be big), Fr. Jim promises that there will be a Blessing of the Asphalt (we’re Episcopalians, of course there’s a liturgy for that!). The completion is scheduled to happen by the middle of October.

Landscaping will still happen after that (see elsewhere in this issue of The Cross for details on how you can help with the landscaping), but for most of us, the sound and the fury (and the lack of parking) will have abated.

Where do we go from here?

So what’s next?

“We’ve decided to live in it for a while and enjoy our parking lot and get a feel for how it works,” said Jim.

Starting in 2011, fundraising will begin for the next phase, where the changes will be more evident—as will the disruptions. The next phase will involve remodeling the kitchen, expanding the worship space and generally changing the church itself. The Education building will be joined to the rest of the church with something more than a canvas awning.

For now, Fr. Jim is happy to let tomorrow worry about itself.

“We just want to enjoy what we already have, before we move on to the next one,” said Jim.