Thank you to the congregation for the many generous contributions toward the Christ Church-Detroit Capital Campaign. With the money raised so far, we will be able to fortify the 160+ year old exterior of our church buildings (which we’ve been calling “securing the envelope”), begin needed updates to Ledyard Hall, and finally update the kitchen! But we still have a way to go to meet our total capital campaign goal and make the much needed renovations.
While the Capital Campaign committee continues to ask for financial support, a Renovation Action Committee (the RAC) has been formed to facilitate the church renovation decision making. The Committee consists of representatives from Vestry, and the relevant church committees Buildings and Grounds, Finance, the Capital Campaign committee and Rev. Emily.
To help guide us through this renovation, the Church has hired an Owner’s Representative whose role it will be to integrate into our Renovation Action Committee and help guide us to hire the right professionals at the right price, and interface with those professionals. Scott Collins is the president of BDC Consulting. With over 20 years of construction and management experience, Scott, along with his Project Manager, Miea Loiselle, have acted as owner’s representatives for Detroit Public Theatre, Marygrove Conservancy and Orchard Lake Schools, to name just a few, all of whom give glowing references. We are excited to welcome Scott and Miea to our team.
Our plans for the next few months are ambitious: 1). You may have noticed Ram Construction working on the tuck pointing, stone replacement and reinforcement of the beautiful stone Bell Tower of our church. We have now raised enough money to complete that work on the south side of the Tower and are working to contract with Ram to complete that work by Christmas! 2) To secure the exterior of our church and Ledyard hall buildings we will need to put construction contract documents out for bid to contractors. With Scott and Miea’s help, we hope to contract with Quinn Evans, the church’s long-time architect, to draft those documents and identify contractors who we would like to bid. 3). While we work on “securing the envelope” of our church buildings with these first two tasks, we want to start a “kitchen listening effort” to start to determine what we want in our new kitchen. Rev. Emily has a vision of communicating with those in the community who may need kitchen support to determine if Christ Church might utilize our new kitchen to partner with others to further our goal of serving our community. 4) In addition, we are working with W3, our contractor for the church tile work, to complete the floor repairs that are needed. There has been a delay because we unexpectedly need to lift some of the pews to complete repairs. We are working with W3 to get back on track shortly.
The number one priority of church leadership during this renovation is to be good stewards of the trust each and every one of our parishioners has placed in us. With a highly qualified owner’s representative on board and a renovation committee that brings together the leadership committees of the church, we are well positioned for an efficient and successful renovation.
If you have not yet joined the team of parishioners supporting the Capital Campaign, please consider doing so. We will also be asking foundations in the community for support and grants. To position us to reach out for community support, our staff and finance committee are working to finalize an audit of the church and to have our financial house in order. It will also help if we can tell potential donors that a high percentage of our parishioners contributed.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact Seth Lloyd, Lisa Jones, Ruth Boeder, Laura Sanom or Rev. Emily.
Contributed by Laura Sanom, Renovation Action Committee Chair. In addition to chairing this committee, Laura is 3rd generation member of Christ Church, and a practicing attorney, specializing in business litigation.
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