BOV Plan Options
On November 20, 2022 the Building Our Vision Team will be presenting to the congregation what projects will make it into the small, medium, and large proposals that the congregation will be voting on. You can now access details about the three option, called Core, Welcoming, and Visionary.
Core Plan – As you might imagine, this is the humblest of the plans and focuses on some much needed improvements. Our historic building also has a historic heating system that occasionally takes a few winter Sundays off. For that matter, the whole building does a rather poor job of keeping all the heat inside. To that end, the Core Plan focuses on greening our building and systems. The goal, of course, is to reduce our maintenance costs, lower our energy bills, and as a result, significantly reduce our carbon footprint.
Welcoming Plan – The second plan include all of the energy-focused improvements in the first plan and reenvisions the way we enter the building. Think back to the first time you visited. Did you know which door to enter? Have you struggled to navigate your way in with a walker or a wheelchair? Finally, is it just us or does the back of the sanctuary get a bit jammed up at the start and end of service? This plan addresses all of those issues and finally makes our building as welcoming as the people inside.
Visionary Plan – Our final plan incorporates all the changes above and takes another step forward. First, it adds a beautiful, skylit connector between the sanctuary and the Parrish House. This new area accomplishes a couple of important goals. The connector will allow us to move from one end of the church to the other without passing through the sanctuary. In addition, it would resolve a long running issue of drainage in that area. Second, this plan reimagines the front of the sanctuary into a space that’s fully accessible by folks of all abilities and configurable for a multitude of uses, all while preserving the look and feel of our traditional, New England sanctuary. Who knows what magic we might create given a little space to spread our wings?