Exciting news! After much deliberation and iterations, the StJB’s Building Committee (3/11/19) came to a consensus on the preliminary floor plan for the new addition. The “right-sized” ADA-compliant design of ~2,000 sq. ft. will include a ~900 sq. ft. Parish Hall (~2/3 the size of the old Parish Hall), efficient kitchen, office/class space, and two half bathrooms. With great care to ensure a proper buffer to the burial area and best optimize  the backyard, the new energy efficient building will attach directly to the north side of the church via the existing Chapel.  The current Chapel will also be repurposed to include a new Sacristy, complete with running water. The floor plan was then presented to StJB Vestry (3/12/19), where it was heartily and unanimously approved. 

What’s next? Our rough floor plan will be sent to our designer who will prepare a more detailed building design, complete with architectural elevations. This will provide visual renderings of the addition and how it will be seamlessly integrated into the style and function of St John the Baptist. We even plan to incorporate a few meaningful items from StJB’s older buildings, like the old Parish Hall double stain-glass doors and the Rectory classroom’s Good Shepherd stain glass window, into the new addition. The Building Committee plans to share the building design to the parish for review and comments in April. With design plans (and snow melt), we can also pursue an engineering site review,  bid quotes (between two vetted contractors, John Rourke and Mac Ford), project approvals, site review and prep. 

In addition, the Vestry is busy preparing our loan application to the NH Diocese to help fund the StJB’s campus reboot, including the new addition, site prep (new septic system, tree removal, parking lot work), as well as long overdue church improvements (water mitigation, add insulation, improve dirt basement/storage). Once a definitive project time-line is flushed out, Vestry will also decide on when to put the Rectory up for sale. Short-term, the Rectory continues to offer us bathroom and meeting space in our campus transition; long-term, its net sales proceeds should fund about half of the total project cost. Stay tuned for more developments in the StJB campus reconfiguration project and details on the parish meeting to review the building design soon.