Where are we in the master planning process?
A church master plan has two parts:
What exists now, and what is wanted and needed for the future.
Right now we are finding out what exists in our facilities and grounds.
As Carrie’s post points out, there is a lot of history, heart, and soul here: in the congregation’s buying this beautiful property, building these unique buildings, and then moving the church home from downtown to here on Sierra Boulevard.
In the site assessment Jeff Gold (who has done this for UU Davis) will turn our attention to things like building conditions, safety, code compliance, and accessibility. What do we have to do right now? What do we need to do in the near future and further out?
When we have more information about What Is and What Is Needed, we’ll be able to start thinking about How To Do It and What We Want.
Ah, but the congregation has done some work on that already, in regard to the rental units. In that case, we know the rental buildings are almost at the end of their “lives.” In order to know more about possibilities for land and for building for non-church uses, you probably know that UUSS held a housing (and commercial) forum last year.
From that, the congregation ruled out building and renting for both housing and for commercial purposes. (All advice was against both commercial and housing rental, and against senior and affordable housing as economically and fiscally not feasible.) The possibilities were narrowed down to housing that would be bought by individuals. UUSS could lease land, a developer could build condominiums, and people could buy them from the developer. That is one possibility.
But right now, our attention is on the whole of our land and the rest of our buildings.
I am eager to hear what Jeff Gold has to tell us.
I hope you will join us after one of the services on January 9 to discuss it.
Ginger Enrico
