December 10, 2023: New Church Update from Fr Paul.
Here is the most recent update on our church project. I am, moreover, going to renew my commitment to send more frequent updates.
As a refresher, Dr Jack Crowley, serves as the Chair of our Building Committee. Jack is a long-time parishioner of St Joseph and has been involved in this project since the beginning. Jack has a PhD in City Planning and Urban Development. His specialties are Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Planning and Urban Design.
Mr. José Perlera and Dr. Luis Candelario continue to work closely with me as advisors as we proceed with the project. José is the Chair of our Pastoral Council. Luis is the Chair of our Finance Council.
I have asked Mr. Jake Grant to assist me in monitoring and reviewing the construction process. Jake is a member of our parish Building Committee and has a distinguished career history as project manager of commercial buildings for a number of county school districts. Jake is now retired from building schools and has availability to help me with the project. Jake accepted my request.
I have asked Mrs. ThuyVy Nguyen to assist me in reviewing the financial processes and transactions of the building of the new church. ThuyVy is a professional accountant and auditor. She is a member of our parish Finance Council. ThuyVy accepted my request.
In a Microsoft Teams virtual meeting Monday November 27 including Fr Paul, the Archdiocesan Catholic Construction project manager Mr. Carl Trevathan and the architect Mr. James McCrery we discussed and resolved six topics.
- We incorporated the final requirements for the new church capacity, length and details about the restrooms into the design.
- We finalized a list of six contractors from whom we will be requesting proposals for the project. For professional motives, I will not announce their names at this point until we have sent the requests to them and received their responses.
- We requested the exact boring locations from the architect to begin the geotechnical study of the site.
- We reviewed and approved the proposed list of civil engineer firms for the project in order to request contracts with them.
- We discussed and established the three way contractual relationship between the civil engineer firm, the architect and our building team.
We finalized the particular details of the project which will be required to update the Athens Clarke County board on the approved special land use permit.