Thank you to the seventy-three (or more) St. Isidore parishioners who attended the general meeting on Dec. 2. After an excellent discussion, a vote was taken on the recommendation by the Expansion Task Force to remove the old church on March Rd., and build a new church on the same site. The result was 65 to 8 in favour of building a new church. This decision was not made easily and reflects 18 months of intensive investigation and planning by the ETF to save the old church through an expansion effort which simply proved to be too costly.
The new church (designed to preserve and reuse the stained glass, the steeple, bell and some stone from the existing church) is estimated to cost $3.5 million - slightly less than half the cost of expanding the old. With the decision made to move forward, the ETF will now work quickly to develop the next steps.
A tour for ETF members of Holy Spirit Church, which is presently under construction at 5870 Abbott St., Stittsville, was provided on Dec. 4, by Father Stephen Amesse. By consulting others, the ETF hopes to learn the best practices for building 'new'.
The above conceptual draft by Architect Ralph Vandenberg
will be further fine-tuned to best meet the needs of St. Isidore parishioners.
An exciting next step will be the launch of an official Fundraising Campaign in January 2008. While each and every gift will be important to our campaign, major gifts will be critical to the success of our project.
The Catholic Community of St. Isidore - Expansion Task Force:
Des Adam (Chair), Father Ross Finlan, Brian Ward,
Mike Green, Darlene Gollesch, Tom Hewitt,
Reg Dion, Jerry Bellomo, Peter Durrell, Mary Carver.
Watch for our regular updates at http://stisidorekanata.com/ under Expansion Plan