The Accessibility Project

Jose Puthenpurakal presents the history of the Accessibility project. This article describes the journey from the inception of the project upto its current status.

By the grace of our Lord, we have a church we can call our own to gather and worship. Prior to the purchase of our current church, we used to meet at various locations, on a monthly basis from April 2003 and thereafter on a weekly basis from December 2003. We moved into our current church in June 2008.

Over time, our congregation grew from 15 to 20 families to more than 100 families. While the main church is our spiritual center, the church basement is our social and cultural center. As time went by, SMCB parishioners felt the need to make the basement accessible for all.

The importance of an accessible basement was becoming increasingly relevant as it would assist and accommodate members with special needs, senior and ailing members, including visiting parents, who found it increasingly difficult to use the stairs to reach the basement. The bathrooms were located on the basement as well.

With this purpose, the Parish council during 2015 - 2017 initiated the discussion and efforts to launch the accessibility project. Unfortunately, their efforts didn’t come to fruition as they failed to find an architect willing to take up the project.

Approval for the Vertical Lift and Accessibility bathroom Project

As time went by, the need for the accessibility project only increased and the Parish council for 2017 - 2018 decided to take a second look at the project. After collecting initial cost estimates, the accessibility project was presented to the General Body in January 2018 and was approved by the General Body for execution. The estimated cost for the project was $120,000. There were 2 major components to this project : Fundraising and Receiving competitive bids for executing the project.

Fundraising efforts

The Parish Council decided to form a fundraising committee led by Denis Neelamkavil, and assisted by Alex Jose, Ancy Varghese, Biya Paul, Cyril Cherian, Don Francis, Grace Pullattu, Henna George, Jeff Kunnel, Jinoy Varghese, Joby Thomas, Jose Puthanpurackal, Joyce Paul, Louis Mechery, Mathew Thomas, Paul Ignatius, Paul Joseph, Rinson Davis, Sajith Thomas, Sunil Joseph and Teelar Varapadavil.

This committee was further divided into different groups. The team considered various ways to raise the money which included the following:

Online fundraising
Individual member appeals
Student initiatives
Raffle tickets
Second collection
Dinner for invited guests

The Online fundraising team initiated a GoFundMe campaign and raised $14,116.
Grade 9 CCD students - Ann Titus(lead), Rithika Thomas, Joshua Sebastian, Riya Denis, Shawn Joseph , Kelvin Chirayath, Maria Mechery , Chris Mundanchery, Neha Joseph, Annmary Skaria, Joshua James, organized a bake sale and raised around $546 towards the project.
The raffle ticket efforts helped raise $540.
The second collection raised $2,021.
The major source of funding/commitment was from our members. Mathew Thomas and Joyce Paul were entrusted to reach out to individual members and receive their commitment. So far we have a commitment of $40,000 from our members.

To encourage the contribution to this noble cause, the General body also approved the display of names of members who contributed $1500/- or more towards the accessibility project on a plaque.

Bidding and Vendor Selection

Vendor selection appeared to be the biggest impediment for our project. We needed an architect to visit the church premises and prepare documents, and a general contractor to execute the plan after obtaining all the permits from the City and State.

Challenge number 1 - Finding an Architect. Based on experiences by the previous Parish council, we knew that it was difficult to hire an architect for a small sized project like this one. We came up with creative solutions to solve that problem. Around the same time, SMCB youth members were also exploring the possibility of building a church community center. They were in discussion with one of the architects and we managed to use the same team to provide us with the required drawing for our vertical lift project.

Challenge number 2 - Finding a General Contractor. General contractors are always in demand, so we ran into the same situation here as well. Finding a contractor for our project was going to be a challenge. Anyway, we went ahead with the vendor selection for the equipment (The vertical lift) and received a quote from their preferred vendor. But, we needed quotes from at least two general contractors to make sure we had a competitive bid. Many committee members tried to contact general contractors through personal connections and online sources without much success. This delay in general contractor selection caused delays and in January 2019 the General Body committee approved the project to move forward with the installation of the vertical lift based on the single quote we had.

Execution and completion

We signed the contracts in October 2019 after obtaining all the permits from the City. Finally, we broke ground on the accessibility project in December. We had originally planned to complete this project by Easter, 2020. However, due to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, the project got delayed and was completed only by mid July 2020. Fr. Tony and team was able to see a demonstration of the Elevator in Action as well.

Conclusion

The Accessibility project will be considered completed only with the completion of the accessible bathroom per regulation. The bathroom project is in progress and in full swing. By the time you come back to church in person, you may be able to see the new accessible bathroom and renovated bathrooms. Congratulations to all of you! This has been a landmark project for all of us, and we've come this far!

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