Sunday's Annual Meeting Report:
Sanctuary Project Update
By Chip Nichols
Facilities Committee Chair
Good morning friends.
In view of our Zoom format for today, I will not go through the Project spending vs. Budget, but the numbers are in the Annual Report and I’d be happy to take questions at the end of the meeting.
Like Tom, I thought this would be a good time to look back, so we can appreciate how far, and by what circuitous route, we have come.
The road started in late 2012, when the Vestry engaged Studio Engineers to study the structural integrity of the Bell Tower and Sanctuary. Their conclusion was that without fundamental structural enhancement, the Sanctuary and Bell Tower would not survive a significant earthquake.
With that call to action, in 2013 the Vestry launched a Parish-wide survey to determine what “user” enhancements should be included in the process of seismic strengthened. The survey responses called for five principal fixes:
- Make the full range of worship available to those with mobility, hearing and other challenges;
- Improve the lighting and acoustics;
- Make the best use of available seating space;
- Replace our failing pipe organ; and
- Build a memorial chapel and columbarium.
The Parish also made clear that we were to make as few changes to the appearance of the Bell Tower and Sanctuary as was humanly possible. It turned out that the County laid on that requirement as well.
A Sanctuary Readiness Committee of clergy, parishioners and consultants was formed and the Church engaged capital campaign consultant Jeff Conway to do a study of what was financially achievable, and engaged local architect Bob Easton, who had designed The Montecito Club and Old Firehouse renovations, as Project Architect.
Building anything in Montecito, particularly an historic treasure like the Sanctuary, requires endless rounds of permit approvals. Due in large part to Rev. Aimee’s outreach efforts, our neighbors were supportive of our plans, even our proposed columbarium (which had twice before been disapproved). We ultimately gained the support of The Historical Landmarks Advisory Committee and The Montecito Association, which made straight the way for eventual approval of our Conditional Use Permit by the County Planning Commission. Simultaneously, leadership was working with our Architect on what eventually became a five inch thick folio of detailed plans, for filing with the County Building Department and review by prospective General Contractors. Fortunately, while all of that was going on we were allowed to deconstruct and rebuild the Bell Tower under an emergency authorization procedure, to prevent it falling and taking out the Sanctuary.
Our plans were finally approved by the Building Department in early 2018 but we deferred our construction start date to October to finalize arrangements for Sojourn Worship in the Parish Hall and minimize disruption to the Parish Pre-School year. But when we sat down in June to open the sealed bids of the three finalists in our General Contractor search, we discovered that the 2017 disasters in Houston and Northern California had inflated materials costs, particularly concrete and lumber, and the Thomas Fire and resulting debris flow had made that worse. The lowest bid was $7.2 million, $2 million over our construction budget.
With Vestry approval we partnered with the low bidder, Armstrong Associates, to value engineer and reduce the scope of our project to fit our budget. By February 2019 we had Armstrong’s new bid of $5,125,000 and signed a “guaranteed maximum price” General Contract with them. The project changes required a massive revision of the approved architectural plans, the cost of which had to be absorbed by our contingency reserves. One casualty of our scope was the plan to repurpose the Vesting Room as a Seaside Chapel, but this can still be built later using the existing approved plans, without disturbing the structural work done to the Sanctuary. Armstrong’s new bid committed to an April 2019 start date and a 14 month construction schedule with completion in May 2020.
Of course, in early 2020 the Covid-19 Pandemic forced an end to our Sojourn Worship in the Parish Hall and threw a monkey wrench into virtually every aspect of the Project, decimating work crews, slowing fabrication and delivery, even gutting the County Building Department’s staff, and we are now looking at construction completion in early May 2021.
In construction, time is money. But despite all of the delays, set backs and duplications of architectural and engineering effort, we expect that our reconstituted contingency reserves will be adequate to absorb these costs. And, allowing for 6 to 8 weeks to refit the Sanctuary for worship following general construction completion, we are hopeful of being in a position to move back in by late June or early July.
And when we are back in, I think you all will be very pleased. We could not improve available seating with the Seaside Chapel, but all of the other fixes called for in the Parish Survey were accomplished in a beautiful, appropriate and energy efficient manner, we made no changes to the Sanctuary’s appearance (except the Bell Tower ivy), and it is engineered to withstand a 7.5 Richter scale quake, for another 120 years.
Thank you for your attention.
