Dear Friends,
Throughout our church's history, UUMC members have supported efforts to maintain and improve our facilities. In recent years, members joined together to successfully fund many improvements to our church's exteriors, including the roof, the exterior building appearance, and the courtyard. Our attention now turns to the three major internal needs of our physical plant that the church's Building Study Committee identified for improvements.
HVAC Systems:
Our HVAC (heating/ventilation/air conditioning) systems include 10 AHUs (air handlers), several water pumps and numerous control elements. Many of the AHUs are beyond their recommended life of service, including the two that service the Sanctuary and the two that service the first and second floors of Heinsohn Hall. A service outage in any of these areas would be extremely detrimental to the ministries of UUMC, namely our worship services and the Early Childhood Center. The funds you pledge to our Capital Campaign will help us replace those AHUs, upgrade our water pumps and install a new control system. The modern equipment will operate much more efficiently and will provide a high quality of service to the Sanctuary and first two floors of Heinsohn Hall for at least the next 20 years.
Restrooms:
There are a total of nine restrooms at UUMC. All of them are outdated and do not meet current building codes. All nine of these restrooms will be improved and/or renovated, and two new restrooms will be added next to the southwest corner of the Sanctuary. With the exception of the existing Sanctuary restroom, all of the restrooms will be brought up to current standards and meet ADA accessibility codes. Having modern, aesthetically pleasing and accessible restrooms will have a major positive effect upon the quality of our community life at UUMC.
Kitchen:
The third major component with a critical need for improvement is the kitchen in Heinsohn Hall. With a lot of helpful input and analysis from the Open Door team, the kitchen will be redesigned and brought up to city codes of operation. The improvements will provide a more efficient work space, and allow the Open Door ministry to utilize the Capital Area Food Bank.
Other planned improvements include renovating the "Green Room" on the northeast side of the Sanctuary and improving the pews in the worship space with repairs and new cushions.
The first phase of our long-range building improvement plan made the exterior appearance of UUMC much more inviting and welcoming to new visitors and members. This second phase of capital improvements will make our interior spaces more inviting for members and visitors to want to keep coming back.
David Reeves
UUMC Building Committee Chairman
