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.

Rain, Rain go away...

...come back when our parking lot is finished. The rain has delayed the completion of our parking lot. The only thing left is to put down tar and asphalt, install tire stops, and striping. Soon we will have this much needed additional space! (We've had 70 cars parking on the grass.) Our water issue appears to be resolved. We don't have anything in writing but we have been given a workable solution verbally. Now our civil engineer is working up the design in AutoCAD. There are still some hoops to jump through with the city of Cibolo and it could take up to 90 days for the solution to be official and to get our plat recorded. The Board of Directors (BOD) will meet later this month to review our Bids that were submitted to the architect last week. Stay tuned and I'll keep you posted.

Hey Bidder Bidder, Bidder...

This week our project is finally going out to bid! This means seven general contractors will give us their competitive bid to build our Phase One construction. This is a huge accomplishment. The bids will come back the first half of September. The water issue still isn't settled yet. While this will hold up construction it won't hold up bidding. Until now all cost estimates have been speculative based on the square footage. We have been anxiously awaiting this stage. It is nice to have some traction lately. We are making progress on parking and now on the bidding. Hopefully the next place we will have traction is getting an affordable water solution for our site.

Paving the way toward expansion

We signed a contract this week to get our parking expansion rolling. You might have noticed the change in overflow parking last week and this will continue for a few weeks. We anticipate if weather cooperates to have our additional parking in place around the 1st of August. This will also include the water detention dam in the lower area of our property. Concerning the new worship center construction we are still working on a solution for water supply. We have been given a cost analysis to get a greater supply of water from both Cibolo (our current water provider) and Schertz. Our greatest need for water is safety in case of a fire. We also have to comply with the current regulations for GPS (Gallons Per Second) based on how our buildings are coded. As soon as we settle this we can get our plat registered. Once our plat is registered we can apply for the building permit. Thank you for continuing to ask about where things stand. Your interest is encouraging! August and September are going to present the phase of our growing pains as we will experience larger crowds than we ever have before. Keep inviting and we will keep making room for more. Lets change some lives!!!

The Latest

Our architectural plans are still being reviewed by Cibolo. Our plat review hasn't officially begun yet. Additionally, we've been looking for an alternative solution to supply our water needs. The talks have only been preliminary at this point. The parking expansion - I really am surprised at the hoops we are having to jump through for pavement. We've had two different reports indicating that we would have already started (if not completed) adding nearly 60 parking spaces. The news we received last week says we are still 2 weeks away from starting. If we aren't dealing with bad weather the parking expansion should take four to five weeks from start to finish.

Join me in praying for these various phases. I'm learning more about commercial construction than I would even want to know. The delays are taking their toll, but I'm beginning to think there are more delays ahead than I can predict. Thank you for your faithful support in our BELIEVE Expansion Project. Keep the faith.

Making Headway...

The last report I shared was not a good one. We were looking at a VERY EXPENSIVE water detention system that was going to be for all practical purposes a dam. We’ve worked with the City of Cibolo and our Civil Engineer and come up with a viable solution. We had to give up some parking to the master plan but we’ve come up with a detention solution that is about 10% of the cost of the dam. Bids for immediately adding around 50 parking spaces should be back next week. Then we can pick a contractor and start moving dirt!

As for the new Worship Center we keep hitting bumps that delay, getting our Construction Documents complete. They won’t be completed in March but all signs point to the first half of April for completed documents. Then the City will review them and indicate needed code changes. Once those are back we will be able to put the project out to bid.

I’ve never been part of a commercial construction project and I am learning much more about the process than I ever thought I would. It certainly takes much more time than I ever anticipated just getting completed drawings that are ready for contractors to bid and do the work. Keep the faith and know that soon we will be seeing earth moving equipment in front of our property. I BELIEVE!

Making Progress

Progress is happening even though there are no visible signs yet. I was updated earlier today with some time-line projections. We are waiting on the civil engineer to finish all access points and flat work (sidewalks/walkways). The expected completion of this is March 5th. Then all engineers will have one final review after architects assemble the drafted construction document (this is basically the blueprints with every detail imaginable). They each get a week to identify any needed corrections. Then we finally get to put the project out to bid! If we can maintain this time-line we should have a company selected by early May.

Another aspect we are working on is adding nearly 60 parking spaces ASAP. We were crushed a few weeks ago with news of a required detention pond that would break the bank. However, we didn't give up and kept pressing to find an acceptable solution. The results are we've had to give up some of the parking plan but we still get to add around 150 more parking spaces with a minimal/affordable detention pond. I think we should have a solid plan for this to submit to the City of Cibolo around mid-March.

Keep praying for this project. You've been faithful and patient. That is a hard combination to have. Soon we will be seeing construction begin and I can hardly wait!

Update on the Dallas visit

There were a couple of major accomplishments with today's visit to Dallas.

1. Stage Height - We've been wrestling with this for over 3 months. And we had previously been able to lower the stage height from 36 inches to 28 inches. We had to wait for a "sight line" study before we could do anything else and the speaker design for the audio system had to be worked out. (There will be some speakers built into the stage and there has to be enough height to allow for these speakers.) After reviewing the sight lines we were able to lower the stage height to 21 inches. This is great news! The lower the height the more connected the audience will feel to what is happening on stage.

2. Video Display System - This is what prompted today's visit. There had been some changes that deviated from the original vision of what we ultimately want to end up with. So most of the design here will be limited to just getting the infrastructure in place so at a later date we will be able to add a VIDEO WALL behind the band. There are too many uses for this to list here but I am really looking forward to what this will add to the worship experience.

3. House and Stage lighting - This is now our holdup before we can complete our Construction Documents. The Lighting Engineer, the Electrical Engineer and the HVAC Engineer have to re-spec the plans. When the lighting plan changes it affects the electrical needs as well as the air conditioning needs.

I didn't get a specific date for completing the construction documents but I anticipate they will be done this month. Then the hard bids will begin and after that we will work with a contractor to make some adjustments to reduce the cost of the project without compromising our needs. When the value engineering is complete and permits are in place then we will see the construction begin!

The one thing I know about this project... we need the space ASAP!

Day trip to Dallas

In the morning I am flying to Dallas for a meeting with our architect as well as our Audio/Video/Lighting (AVL) engineer. The purpose of the meeting is to settle on the AVL plan for the stage in the worship center.

I'll provide an update after the visit.

The Inside Scoop

I'm glad you've discovered the blog where I will be making updates on the status/progress of our expansion project to add our new Worship Center and expand our parking.

Here is where we currently stand.
-Parking-
We are waiting to hear back from the City of Cibolo concerning a water detention pond. This is something we were told at the first of the year we would need. It was news to us. We are working with our Civil Engineer to see if there is a way to use a more eco-friendly surface or if there is another approach we can take to eliminate or delay the need for water detention. We are praying that we can either phase in the parking plan to include water detention when we add our last phase of parking or that we can create a different parking plan that won't require the detention. After we have a final word here, we will let you know where things stand.

-Construction-
The work with the Architects to have a finalized plan to send out for hard bids to contractors should be complete by March. We had hoped to complete this before the end of the year (2009). There are several engineer specs coming from several different entities to complete these documents. We had previously anticipated a Spring start date but there have been some minor delays. It's really hard to predict at this point a start date. Once a contractor is selected and they submit our plans to the City we will have a solid understanding of a probable time line.

-In the meantime-
Keep praying for this project! Thank you for your generous support. The sacrifice will be more than worth it!