Parish Center Addition

At Berneche2 Architecture we do both residential and commercial project types.  Most of our project are single-family residences (houses) but for the past two years we have been working with Queen of All Saints Parish in Michigan City, Indiana to develop a new Parish Center.  On Tuesday October 27, 2015 I presented the project to DuPage Referral Network to show an example of our non-residential work.

The initial call was that they wanted to add "a meeting room".  We visited Father Kevin and he showed us a modular classroom building that needed several repairs, and the thought was it would be more practical to do an addition versus spending $50,000 to repair a temporary structure.  So a meeting room became four classrooms, though these would now be used by church groups so Meeting Rooms was the appropriate term.

Next the thought was that a meditation chapel created in a 1999 addition was not very conducive to meditation because the school library was upstairs.  So it was decided to move that into the addition.

Finally, the existing 1965 church was designed with an undersized Narthex.  A Narthex is an entry space akin to a theater lobby, where people can meet and have fellowship before and after a service.  The Narthex for the church was more of an eleven-foot wide corridor that is not very conducive to groups.

The project has several goals:

1. The new facility will connect together a 1950 split-level school building and a 1965 church, which are 70 feet apart.  The addition main floor level will match the church.  

2. An elevator is required for accessibility.  The Americans with Disabilities Act exempts religious facilities from the need to comply as they are considered private entities.  However, other codes adopted by the state do consider churches as public facilities and therefore must comply.  It will be a two-sided elevator situated against the school and the school floor levels will extend into the elevator lobby to make the school wheelchair accessible.  

3. A two-story facility was eventually agreed upon.  The design went through two major versions.  In the first the gathering space was broken up into two parts, a large glass atrium off the main parking lot, and then a carped seating area closer to the church.  The chapel, meeting rooms, and toilet rooms were placed adjacent to the church for structural reasons.  The church committee felt strongly that the gathering space should be located right outside the church.  Concepts were developed to make this happen.  Both one and two story options were presented, the latter with intent to save cost.  While the two-story concept will cost a little more, it will take up less of the site and fewer parking spaces and outdoor areas will be lost.

4. Building codes allow churches to have minimal toilet facilities, likely anticipating that most folks are there for an hour and then leave.  For the 700-seat church there is a single men's and women's toilet.  This is inadequate for the current after hours uses, and will not be sufficient for groups meeting here.  The new facility will have two groups of toilet rooms, one on each level, and 16 new toilets/urinals will be available.

5. The four meeting rooms were designed to work as six rooms, two rooms divided into smaller rooms, as the size of the original rooms is much larger than required by most groups.  There will be two groups of rooms, one on each level, and each will be divided with operable partitions which can be opened to allow all three rooms to become one large meeting room when needed.  

6. Father Kevin truly wanted to have the glass doors between the gathering space and church to visually connect the spaces.  Originally we had these as solid doors with small windows in a three-hour fire wall to separate the two buildings.  However, this became important enough to where we will be adding a sprinkler system to the church, allowing us to eliminate the fire wall and use full glass doors.  We still need to maintain a two-hour fire wall between the school building and addition, and security of the school warrants the separation anyway.

7. One major issue being addressed are the site utilities.  When the building was constructed galvanized pipe was used for the school water supply.  The City is requiring a backflow preventer on this line as well.  There were also some utilities between buildings not documented on older drawings and some of these will have to be relocated.  The Civil engineer notified us that there is a major 

We first met with Father Kevin June 2013 to initially discuss the project.  With the initial concept we worked with their fundraising team to communicate the intent to the parishioners, which included hiring a 3d rendering company to develop a fly over animation of the project.  We were authorized to commence construction documents Spring 2015, and we are currently completing drawings and specifications to be released to bidders December 2015.  Construction is scheduled to begin June 2016 after the Parish Festival.  The construction phase is anticipated to last nine months.

It has been exhilarating, challenging, and very rewarding working on a larger project again.  I worked at a K-12 school planning firm 1995-2004 and it has been wonderful to work on a project of this scale with our own firm.  We look forward to doing many more.

Images of the progress can be seen on our Berneche2 Architecture Facebook Page.

Tim Berneche