The Capital Campaign Steering Committee is happy to report that the Hopewell Township Planning Board memorialized the Resolution of Approval at their June meeting. The drawings are being submitted to the township and, along with obtaining formal approval (already received verbally) from two other governing agencies, everything should be completed by the end of July.
We are grateful that Steve Saddlemire joined the Steering Committee to take a lot of the pre-construction workload off Mary Acciani’s shoulders. Steve has initiated weekly meetings with the architect, follows up with engineers frequently, and provides weekly updates to the rest of the Steering Committee.
The design and engineering realized significant progress over the past month with the issuance of the mechanical, plumbing and fire alarm drawings for our review. We are still waiting for the Electrical part of the Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing (MEP) documents; these are expected to be delivered by early July. Mary will perform a technical review and Steve will provide the constructability analysis, after which, the architect will update drawings to be used for bidding and building permits.
We have contacts for five general contractors that we will reach out to for bids. If anyone is aware of minority-owned businesses that we could reach out to, please let us know. One of the five we have is woman-owned. An online search of Black or Hispanic owned businesses has not yielded any local general contractors that work on commercial projects like this. But we could be missing something, so appreciate any suggestions from the congregation!
We hope to have timelines for the phases of construction by the end of August at the latest. As mentioned previously, the main paved parking lot will be out of use for congregation for about the first three months after construction begins. For now, no programs that require the use of the kitchen or Crossings Room should be scheduled between September 2020 and end of January 2021. That timeline may shift….
Mary Baltycki and George Faulkner have been meeting with officers from local banks to obtain financing so that we may pay off the current mortgage balance and obtain an additional sum of money to carry us through the timeline during which we will be disbursing funds for the building expansion and simultaneously receiving pledge payments to cover the cost of the project. The goal is to pay all capital project costs from pledges, NOT to pay them from annual stewardship income.
Thank you so very much to all who have pledged and are continuing to pay their Capital Campaign pledges! Current financial summary is below:
Total pledges (from phases 1 & 2) $1,115,000
Total collected to date ($662,000)
Remaining to collect ($453,000)
Paid for parking expansion $114,000
Available for building expansion $1,000,000
Estimated building expansion cost $1,200,000
Plus extra needed for loan repayments and margin for expansion costs $200,000
Total needed $1,400,000
Desired loan amount $400,000
Jayme Trott and Susan Vigilante, Co-Chairs, Capital Campaign