We are still in a holding pattern for financing our project. Our bank had told us we'd have the answer nearly two weeks ago and well... we don't. Some of the decision makers were out of the office last week. We are currently working on two contingencies. The first one we've already presented and there is another one in the works as well. We have grown 13% from this same time last year and eventually (sooner not later) we will be out of space. Sometime between the very near future and this coming August we will be going to three services. 8:15, 9:35 and 11:00 on Sunday mornings. I pray that we will have a significant amount of people who will be willing to move to the 8:15 service from our current 9:30 service and that we will also have many from our 11 service who will move to the 9:35 service. This sacrifice would allow for more room to reach people at our most popular hour... 11:00. I hope to have another update for you soon.

Believe Update

The appraisal is in and more favorable but it's still not giving us a 60/40 LTV ratio. We requested a revision to what came back a few weeks ago because the appraisal left off almost 700 sq. ft. We haven't heard the final revised property appraisal based on the new construction. However the bank is still going to review our loan request. They will consider our loan even though we are needing to borrow a little more than 60% of the value.

We've had two dates come and go without the loan being presented but now we are told it will happen in the morning. This is a God Sized Ask! We are seeking to receive a loan of nearly 4 times what we received last year in our general giving and Believe giving combined. If we get approved, the design will need to have construction documents developed (This should take a few weeks) and then it will go back out to bid (about 3 weeks).

I've spoken with a couple of General Contractors and it seems like there are many who are in our situation. The funding is taking an extremely long time. This is a very cautious time for lenders. Crosspoint's nearly 8 years of history shows growth, growth and more growth. It has been a rewarding journey and I look forward to what the decades ahead have in store.


Below you will find our latest building design. It's still subject to change but I wanted you to be able to review it.

Registered Plat

At the end of 2010 we had another major accomplishment. Our plat was recorded with the City of Cibolo. Without our property being platted we couldn't proceed with our expansion project. (See previous posts for a better understanding of the plat.) Financing the project is our last significant hurdle. Our bank was hoping to give us the final verdict in December but it has been, you guessed it, delayed. We should be updated this month. There is some concern because the value engineering hasn't reduced our construction cost enough. We've worked hard to get our construction costs down to $2,200,000 but we are about a quarter of a million away from this goal. Also the December delay with our bank was do to some bad news. The minimum amount of equity we are required to have has shifted in this economy. What used to be the standard Loan to Value was 80.20. This economy has shifted the Loan to Value for church. Now the standard Loan to Value for churches is 60/40. Our project, if we could get the construction costs down, of $2,200,000 comes in at 71/29 Loan to Value. We are waiting on a reassessment of our previous appraisal before the bank will make a formal decision for financing our project.

In the meantime another private lending group is evaluating our financial needs. Because of the concern of coming up short on our financing we've begun to look at a redesign that would reduce the project from nearly 16,000 square feet to closer to 13,000 square feet. We aren't putting a lot of effort here because we would prefer to build the original design. But we don't want to give up or have to wait another year before we could build more space. If there is a redesign the three highest priorities are 1. Worship space for 500, 2. Restrooms and 3. Expanded coffee shop.

I hope to have an update for you by the first week in February.=

One more box checked

Our project was approved at last nights Planning and Zoning meeting for the City of Cibolo. It was a slam dunk. Now it will go before the City Council next. We've met with 5 lending institutions to discuss our needs for this expansion. Soon we should be hearing back from all of them. The Value Engineering for the project is still ongoing. With this we are striving to keep the entire vision of the project and cut costs. To say this is tedious doesn't even come close to expressing what all has to be considered to get the costs down. I wish I had more to update you with but I don't at this time.

Keep the faith and don't stop BELIEVING!

Update

We have begun to meet with lenders to secure the financing for our project. So far we've meet with 4 local lenders and there are two out of town we still need to meet with. The terms look good but we are told it's difficult for churches to get the necessary funding in this current economic climate. I believe God is in control and I'm not worried about crosspoint getting the resources we require. Thanks to your generous support we've been able to pay for over $330,000 in project expenses. The two largest expenses are the architect and parking. We've only paid for half of the parking project while we are awaiting completion before we pay the 2nd half.


Here is the short list of what we are waiting on.
The Plat to be registered with the City of Cibolo. It is currently in their hands to be approved.
Value Engineering on the overall construction costs. We need to get the original bid down from 2.7 million to as close as possible to 2.2 million.
Secured financing.


It is possible for all these to be in place before the end of the year. And once this happens we can sign on the dotted line and get this project started!

We've gone through round one of VE (Value Engineering) where the contractor identified obvious areas that could save us money. With only a little over $100K identified, we haven't trimmed nearly enough off of the expense to make the expansion "affordable." In this new economy money is scarce. Lenders aren't giving based on what we can afford but more in line with what they can afford to risk. And who can blame them. We are meeting with our selected contractor, The Struthoff Company, on Oct. 13th to identify more areas for VE as well as identify possible areas to reduce the scope of the project. Over the next several weeks we will also be aggressively pursuing lenders to find the best match for us.

The Plat will be applied for on October 14th. It could take until Dec. 28th to get it recorded if there aren't any issues. There are a series of hoops that have to be jumped through before it can be recorded with the City of Cibolo.

In case you missed my update I gave at church on September 26, we are believing that our expansion project will begin before the spring. This is so much later than I would have imagined. I'm learning just how long of a project something like this is. But once we begin, the project is scheduled to take 12 months as long as there are no big delays with bad weather.

Keep praying and thanks for being patient and supporting our project.

Parking Spaces

The pre-construction parking is done! We now have more pavement for more people! We will continue to use the secondary entrance for parking off pavement. For some it's more convenient and for others it is a sacrifice they are willing to make so first time guests feel like we have room for them. Tonight our BOD meets to review the bids for the construction. With firm bids we are now able to approach lending institutes to get the necessary financing. There is no new news on the platting of our property and this is the next hurdle.