Conceptual Design Suggestion for Future

As you are probably aware, over the last couple of years the Parish Council, with my support, has been sponsoring the investigation of the worship needs of the Parish, in particular in regards to our physical plant. Without detailing that entire history, suffice to say that late last year, following input from the last parish town meeting, the Parish Council and I authorized the use of some of our Partners in Faith funds to hire an architectural firm for the purpose of developing a small number of "conceptual plans" for the future of our physical plant to see us through the next 10 to 20 years and beyond.

There are three key points I'd like to make before detailing the request. First, NO decisions have been made about the nature of any potential conceptual plans. More specifically, no decision has been made to expand or not to expand the footprint of the physical plant. We would like the requirements that we gather - balanced with a range of other considerations including, obviously, finances - to guide what we ask for in these conceptual plans. Second, these conceptual plans will not be blueprints that we could hand to a contractor to do any work. Those would have to be generated later, after we've decided on our next steps and at additional expense. Having the conceptual plans in hand will in no way obligate us to take any further action. Third, the PIF funds that have been authorized for conceptual plan development are already in our hands and have been earmarked specifically for this kind of expense. They are not coming out of our regular operating budget nor will they require fundraising.

At this point I wish to solicit your help in gathering, from your perspective, suggestions that we can feed into the architects so that the conceptual plans they develop for us are most closely in line with our collective needs. Please consider those things that you do not want to see changed and those you think could use improvement regarding our facility and grounds.

If there was one thing that you would want to see happen with St. Paul's facilities and grounds, what would that be?

Please send an email with your suggestion to wstpaulc@dor.org