Building Update 4-2-08

We had an awesome Ground Breaking day on Sunday!  After years of preparation it is very exciting to begin seeing something move besides pieces of paper.

The surveyors have been here all week laying out boundaries with GPS units.  You will see stakes all over the property.  Tomorrow morning bulldozers will be here to clear paths for the silk fence.  The silk fence will be installed through Monday. 

On Tuesday the construction and environmental teams will be here to begin relocation of the gopher turtles.  The gopher turtles should be relocated by the end of next week.

During these two weeks additional City permits and inspections will be taking place.   If all goes well you will begin to see land clearing the week after the turtles are relocated.

We are well on our way.  Now that things are starting to happen on campus you will see more and more building updates.   Keep checking in because I will keep you posted on the progress of the expansion all the way through the process.

Keep praying.

Building Update 3-25-08

Today we submitted the architectural, building, and site plans to the City of Ormond Beach.  Everything went extremely well.

I would like to sincerely thank our Chief Architect, Don Kimble, for his plans and presentation to the City today.  The City’s Building Permit Official was highly impressed with the plans and presentation.  He actually asked me where we found these guys because the plans were so complete.  He usually sends plans of a project this large to an outside agency to review them.  He said that he is going to review these plans himself because they are laid out so well.  He assured us that we wouldn’t have any problems with the building department and he would work with us very closely. 

This goes back to our decision in the beginning to go with a Church Designer/Church Builder.   We chose RMessner as our Church Designer/Builder because they know churches.   So far they have proven to be an extremely valuable asset.  They came up with many great ideas to improve the building.  They said that our building is designed to be the most state of the art audio/visual building that they have every designed.  Their exact words were that our building will rival the acoustics in Carnegie Hall.

We are going to break ground on our new building this Sunday March 30, 2008.  You should start seeing silk fencing going up within a few days.  The actual clearing of the land will follow shortly thereafter. 

Ladies and Gentlemen we are on our way.

Building Update 2-15-08

We now have approval from the City of Ormond Beach. 

Click below to see the letter from the city

 City Approval 

Let the Games Begin!

Last night we got our final approval from the Ormond Beach City Commission.  We have also crossed all the hurdles with the County and are awaiting their final signatures.  We have agreements for all the easements that need to be moved (yes including American Tower.  Praise God!).  We are just waiting for final signatures on some of the easement documents.

As we clean those things up we are moving forward with the bid process.  We have already reviewed many bids and are looking through many more.  We are currently applying for the permitting we need to move forward.  The first permit we need is the permit to move some gopher turtles.  Then, follows the permit to begin clearing the land.

All those years of planning are now upon us.  Pastor Raley should announce the Groundbreaking service within a week or so.  And the clearing process should begin within a couple of weeks after we have the Groundbreaking service. 

Hold on to the handrail in front of you because ready or not here we go!

Building Update 01-16-07

Last night we met with the Ormond Beach City Commission.  Everything went well and everything passed that was on our agenda.   We meet with the City one more time on February 5th to obtain approval for our entire parking layout.

We are still waiting for approval from the County but don’t see any huge roadblocks there.   Hopefully we will have the approvals we need from the City and County to begin filing for permits after the February 5th meeting.

The only unknown at this point is the easement for American Tower.  We have verbal or written approvals from FDOT, City of Ormond Beach, FPL, and AT&T for moving their easements.  Like I mentioned in my last update the only company giving us a problem is American Tower.  I’m going to refrain from giving my thoughts with the hope and prayer that they do what is right.  Within the last couple of days we have finally got them to open dialogue again with us concerning the easements.  We ask you to pray for favor with American Tower.

There is still alot of work going on behind the scenes with our consultants, our attorneys, and the various agencies.   Please continue to keep the project high on your prayer list.

God Bless.

Pastor Troy

Update 12-21-07

Last night our project was in front of the City’s DRB (Development Review Board).   The DRB was reviewing our Special Exception as a House of Worship.

Let me explain Special Exception because some people might believe that we are getting special treatment of some kind.  That is not the case. 

A Special Exception is simply new terminology of what use to be called “conditional use” of a piece of property.   This simply means that we have a “special exception” or a “conditional use” to have a House of Worship on this piece of property.   However, any time that you make any changes to the property then you must amend the special exception to include any change that you make to the property.  Since we are adding a new building and new parking then the special exception had to be amended.

Last night the DRB recommended approval for our special exception by a vote of 4-0.  This matter, along with the balance of our zoning changes, will be taken up by the City Commission on January 15th.

At the same time we are in the process of moving all the easements on our property to the west side of the new building.  For example FPL, City, Bellsouth, AT&T, DOT, and American Tower have easements.  We are in the process of having all of them moved over at this time.  The only easement that we are having a difficult time with is American Tower.  Unfortunately, American Tower is attempting to take this opportunity to force us to sign a longer lease for the Tower.  I can assure you that is not going to happen.   I ask you to please pray for these negotiations.  We have retained Cobb Cole as our legal representation and they are working diligently to assist us get everything approved.

We still need many different departments in the City and in the County to sign off on our plans before the City Commission can give final approval.  Just pray for favor with everyone involved. 

I’ll keep you posted on the progress.

Everyone have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Update 12-19-07

Well here we go!  It’s getting closer and closer.   The time is upon us to build!

Yesterday morning we met with the County.  I’ll take a minute to explain why we need the County’s approval.  The new land that we purchased to our west is in the County.  A small sliver (about 900 sq ft) of the new building will be in the county and the parking lot on the west side of the building will also be in the county.

Well, the easiest thing to have done would have been just to annex the county property into the city. That way we would have only had to work with one government.  However, a problem arose with the annexation.  Normally the annexation would not have been a problem however state law says that you cannot annex property and create an enclave.  There is a gentleman who owns a small piece of property between our new property, the DOT property behind us and the Tomoka river.  He must annex into the city as well.  The reason is that you cannot leave one boxed in piece of property in the county because that would hypothetically create the enclave.  The gentlemen will not sell and he will not annex into the city under any circumstances.  

Now there is a solid argument that the annexation does not create a enclave by the strict definition of the state law.  However, both the city and county attorney felt that it would.  Its hard enough to fight city hall but its even harder to fight city and county hall.  

Hence the reason why we must keep the property in the county and have the county review the part of our property that is in the county and the city review the property that is in the city.  It’s not the easiest or normal way of doing things but whoever said we are normal.  As a general rule you do not want to have to present all your plans to two separate governments.  But, you’ve got to do what you got to do to get the job done.

Back to the meetings.  We met with the County DRC (Development Review Committee) yesterday morning.  After reviewing our plans they presented a few pages of comments.  We clarified all of their comments with the exception of two where we needed additional information.   As a result, the county DRC voted to conditionally approve our final site plan based on us answering the two outstanding questions.  We are already working on answering their questions and do not see any obstacles to obtaining final approval from the County.

Then, last night we went in front of the City Commission to rezone the back 10 acres of our property from High Density Residential to Tourist Commercial.  This has been a long process but it had to be rezoned.  The truth is that we could have put part of our building on this 10 acres zoned as High Density Residential.  However, a problem with the height arose.  The City measures a building’s height as the median distance from the eve of the building to the top of the building.  Our building measures 48 1/2 feet.  High Density residential only allows 40 feet.  Tourist Commercial allows a height of 50 feet.  Since the property where our current sanctuary sits is already zoned Tourist Commercial then it only makes sense to make the back of our property the same zoning as the front.  This rezoning then allows for the height we must have for our new building.  Now some of you are probably asking yourself why zoning is Tourist Commercial.  Well, don’t try because you can’t make sense of that.  Every City board that we have been in front of has asked the same question.  It doesn’t really make sense but that is the only zoning that the code provides that allows us to obtain the result we need.   We can’t rewrite the code so we have to work with what’s there.  The bottom line is that this gives us what we need so we go before the City Commission and ask for approval so we can move forward.

The good news is that the City Commission unanimously approved the rezoning last night.  We have to go in front of the City Development Review Board this Thursday night (I’ll explain that meeting on Thursday).  Then we have to go in front of the City Commission one more time on January 15th to obtain the final rezoning approval from the City. 

Then what?  Well, after January 15th we immediately start filing for permits to start clearing and building.   Wow.   All this time and its now on us.   We are so excited.  I realize that this is a rather long blog but alot of things are going on and I want to keep you guys informed on what is happening.  Tell your friends about this blog.  I will start writing more and more as we progress through the building process. 

Building Update

Thursday was a huge day for us.  I was so excited that I wanted to write this blog then, but I had to wait for Pastor Raley to make the announcement on Sunday.

In October of 2005 we negotiated with the landowner of the 30 acres to our west to purchase the property for $ 2.5 Million.  Rather than get a loan our fellowship purchased the property and gave us a three year first option to purchase the land at the original asking price of $ 2.5 Million.  We have been paying interest on the $ 2.5 Million since October 2005.

We encountered a dilemma because we needed to move some easements (FPL, FDOT, AT&T, Tower) to the new land because the current easements will run through our new building which will sit on our current property.  Obviously we couldn’t move easements to land we didn’t actually own.  So, we needed to purchase the land to move forward.  As you probably know we didn’t have the  $ 2.5 Million to purchase the property.  So, we started investigating avenues to obtain a loan to purchase the land.

BUT GOD!!!!   And here is the exciting news.  An anonymous donor came forward and gave us the $ 2.5 Million to purchase the property.   As of Thursday Calvary actually owns the entire 30 acres to our west.   Now we can move the easements and continue moving forward full steam ahead!

My friends, the Lord is on our side.  I just can’t wait to see what God is going to do in the lives of people as we continue to be faithful and put Him first!

Building Update

The Development Board gave unanimous approval for the FLU and zoning amendments.  We now move toward the City Commission hearing on November 20. 

Please keep up the entire process in your prayers.  We are attempting to run many procedures concurrently to speed up the process.  Most of the work and rezoning is being done simply to allow us to obtain the height we need for the new building.  We tried everything but the entire comp plan amendment and rezoning is the only avenue we have to obtain the height.

Update

The meeting with the City of Ormond Beach was just postphoned to October 18th.  The City doesn’t believe that this will change our overall schedule.