Progress Photo No.2

After a couple of weeks of work behind the scenes men and machines have started work on site!


Next week we'll have a ground breaking ceremony to celebrate the start of the work on site and will be raising the profile of the project via the local press - so look out for photos of Tim with a shiny spade!

Progress Photo No.1

This is the first of many photos that we'll be posting to show you the progress on site. Whilst not a lot has happened so far (After all Cowlin have only had three days), we are expecting to see some dramatic changes over the coming months.

The begining

With site work starting tomorrow it seems an appropriate time to do a quick recap of why the Resound project is going ahead:

BCF is a network of three churches in the Bristol area, all joined together by a shared history, common values, and a commitment to enriching the lives of local residents.

Over the past forty years BCF has developed strong links with the communities of Emerson’s Green and surrounding areas within Bristol.

Building on this, we are now redeveloping the site that used to house one of our old church building in Blackhorse Road, Mangotsfield. In desparate need of repair, the old building would have struggled to meet our current and future needs even if we had been able to adequately refurbish it. So we decided to develop the new building, Resound. With intelligent design and a commitment towards environmentally sustainable construction, the building will prove visually stimulating and resource efficient.

As a replacement building it will enable BCF to deliver on its many commitments and ambitions. Particularly the centre will be home to Resound Church, the established Crossways pre-school, and a new community centre for the locality. We hope that Resound will not only become a meeting ground for our church members, but also the familes who use Crossways pre-school, along with the residents of Mangotsfield and Emersons Green.

Construction starts tomorrow 6th June 2011, with the completed building due to be open in February 2012.

D Day

Finally, we're really pleased to be able to confirm that we've appointed Cowlin Construction to build the new Resound Centre. After extensive discussions, Value Engineering, and tweaks to the design which included the revised planning application, we've been able to agree on a final design and contract value.

Site work is due to start on 6th June with the new building completed and ready for us to use in February 2012!

We'll be posting images of the build once it starts along with more regular updates on progress on the blog, so watch this space.

The site - cleared and ready for the build

Planning Part 2

As a result of the Value Engineering exercise that we mentioned in January it has been necessary to submit a slightly revised planning application. This has been in order to make minor amendments to the numbers of external doors, the roof finish and even move the building so that it fits more accurately on the site!

Whilst these are all minor changes, and ones that most people won't notice, planning law dictates that we have to get them approved before we can be sure of the resultant financial savings. Today we received the good news that the amendments have been approved.

We also received the final Contract at the weekend and are now reviewing it prior to getting it signed. So expect us to be advising when the Contractor will start on site very soon.

Chairs

Okay, so this might seem a little premature, but we've been thinking about chairs. Understandably a vital thing to put into the completed building, but when it's still a muddy site? However, with storage space being fairly limited we're trying to source chairs that are both stylish, comfortable, stack, sustainable and at a reasonable price. Achieving some of these is fairly straightforward, but meeting all these requirements is less so. The search for the optimum seat will probably continue for a while yet, but at least we know have a good idea of a likely budget for them and that there are products out there than can stack a whopping 30 high!

However we've not just been thinking about seating, we've also been busy finalising the contract with the builder in parallel with arranging the necessary funding via our preferred ethical bank Triodos.

Dancing the night away

Friday night saw 170 people filling the dance floor at Hanham Folk Centre, dancing the night away and raising more than £1,000 for the Resound building.

We'd like to say a big thankyou to everybody who came along and supported the project, especially Sarah H and Nikki M who organised the Barn dance and the Raffle.

We're all looking forward to the next event!