ZPC Building Project

25 years have passed since the last building expansion in 1997 and there is a general need for renovation and refreshment throughout the building. More importantly, our project goals address emerging building concerns while noting community growth adjacent to our property in terms of new rental properties and single-family housing developments. The project goals are best summarized as creating an invitational space that optimizes relationships, provides flexibility, and facilitates growth. The building project and design goals, which are all reasonably addressed by the proposed project, are:

• Flexibility and future-proofing
• Optimizing hospitality
• Clear way-finding
• Welcoming exterior
• Safety and security
• Budget-conscious plan

Our mission has always been “called together by God to make disciples and release them for service in our broken world.” The guiding principles of the building project are to enhance the invitational, relational, and “respirational” aspects of our ministry and the tremendous facilities we enjoy, while updating and preparing the building for future generations. The “respirational” aspect of the life of ZPC is that we gather into the building, through all the interactions and events at ZPC, and then we scatter, or are sent out, into the world as growing disciples prepared for service.

ZPC’s Session launched a property and building needs assessment team in 2015. Stakeholders from staff, user groups, and every key ministry were engaged on both practical needs and visionary dreams. The feedback was synthesized and brought to Session with specific recommendations. Session also launched a facility security team resulting in temporary and long-term recommendations to address evolving needs and concerns. In 2018, Session launched a property-design team who engaged an architect on design options to estimate potential construction project costs to address needs. Session also engaged a capital campaign firm to evaluate feasibility and consult and later selected an Owner’s Representative firm to project manage design through potential construction. In March of 2020, a dinner and information meeting was scheduled to present the project plan to the congregation but the pandemic resulted in cancellation of the meeting and all plans were put on hold.

In early 2022, Session picked up the facility discussion anew and determined that the plan needed a refresh with new specifications allowing us to address post-pandemic construction cost and availability concerns. They also decided to immediately move forward with two parts of the plan: the building of a separate Food Pantry on our campus and renovation of our Chapel (both projects were completed summer 2023). With that work completed, we kicked off a building campaign called "Catching the Wind" and have since received generous pledge support of more than $11,000,000!  

NextGen Ministries will have new space and newly renovated space. Our Littles Ministry (birth-K), which is concurrently shared with our Noah’s Ark Ministry, will have one entrance and one exit securely dedicated to those ministries; thus allowing us to better secure and track our covenant children. Bigs (1st-4th grades), MSM (5th-8th grades), and HSM (9th-12th grades) would also have newly renovated and dedicated space. This allows each of the respective ministries to have dedicated space and amenities, so we can reach our covenant children in a comfortable environment for them.

Because we have invested in our Sanctuary over the last few years, the updates in that space would be limited to new carpet and reupholstering the chairs.

A great way to reinforce our desire to be invitational, relational, and respirational and to be more outward facing is to upgrade the main entrance of our building with new space and amenities to allow the community to visually see that we are God’s Church. The Gathering Space is another focus area for these reasons and will be restructured to allow for more pocket spaces, such as a Coffee and Donut area, space for additional family seating and small group gathering spaces, as well as easier access to the Gym, NextGen Ministries, and other areas of the building.

The Kitchen will be renovated and designed by a kitchen professional. All the mechanical systems of the building will be upgraded during the project.

In general, there will be improved way-finding, better flow of crowds, more security, and general necessary renovations to our aging building.

The project will add approximately 20% or 13,000 square feet to our existing 67,000 square foot building. Most of the building will be renovated.

There are no plans for renovating the Church Office or Gym.

Final plans for the Cabin have not yet been made but it will likely be taken down.

There are no specific growth objectives in terms of attendance, but ZPC needs to continue to attract new members and families to, at a minimum, sustain our ministry for future generations. The proposed project targets addressing facility concerns and optimizing use while ensuring capacity for potential growth. We project that a more secure and invitational facility will result in growth in attendance. If growth occurs, several existing ministries are in place to maintain health including Hospitality, Assimilation, New Member, and Home Group ministries.

The facility design expands space available for Children’s Ministries through high school, the kitchen, Great Banquet, and general, flexible meeting spaces including the Gathering Space. Although the Sanctuary remains the same size, we currently have capacity for 60% growth in two-service attendance and the option of adding additional services remains. ZPC commonly operated with more than two Sunday morning worship services over the past many years. It should also be noted that expanding the Sanctuary would add substantial cost.

Our facility is a mission and discipleship generator, fueled by making disciples that will fund and participate in on-going and future ministry, mission, and service. We believe investing in the facility will result in budgetary growth, generating on-going investment in sustainable ministry, missions, and service in terms of dollars and people.

The cost of the project is estimated at $13 million. Built into the cost estimates are contingencies that total nearly 28%. Those contingencies planned are: Design (5%), Construction (5%), Escalation (6%), Pricing (9%), Owner (3%). Inflation has been built into the contingencies above, but the availability of the materials and raw goods seem to be getting better, although we really don’t know the full impact yet. In a perfect world, start to finish on this project would be nearly 13 months. We estimate due to working around church events, weather, and other unknown items, the project will likely take an estimated 18-24 months.

ZPC went through a thorough process to select our current partners, interviewing three candidates in each respective area below. This process, which involves the owner representation role, was designed to help us put the experts in the right places. With the contingencies mentioned above and the partnerships we have in place, we feel comfortable with the current budget. Our current Partners are:

• The Veridus Group – Owner Representative
• DELV Design – Architects
• Pepper Construction – Construction Manager and Cost Estimator

Our best estimate today is that our operating costs will increase by 2-3%. We currently have nearly a $3 million operating budget, so total increase is expected to be $60,000-90,000.

The Session and Staff of ZPC would prefer not to have a mortgage. Much of that depends on God’s plan and generosity. However, the Session and Finance Team are comfortable with a mortgage up to $3 million if one is needed. The operating costs would be impacted by the interest on the mortgage (current environment is 6-7%) which would add nearly $200,000 to the operating budget. 

The phasing of the project has been outlined and will be shared as construction proceeds. We plan to continue to use the building during construction though adjustments will need to be made throughout the building process. We will do everything we can to make sure that our programming is able to run as close to normal as possible.