by John Battle

As described in recent Briefs article and last month’s congregational meeting, Bethany has commenced the process of evaluating improvements to the Church structure to prevent injury to persons in and around the church in the event of an earthquake.

There are many such older buildings in Seattle. The City agencies have standards and there are teams of people who have done this work successfully. Our committee has selected an architect, SMR, and a structural engineer, IL Gross from a competition of multiple firms. These firms have demonstrated the most experience, creativity and cost-effectiveness. It will be the engineer’s responsibility to figure out how to strengthen the building and it will be the architect’s responsibility to make this innocuous and adapt the work to today’s codes.

Once contracts are finalized, the architects will survey all the spaces and uses to develop a preliminary scheme for discussions with the City agencies. Once an agreement is reached with the City regarding the scope of work, the architect will develop the design documents. Early in this process, we will competitively select a general contractor who will provide us cost information, and help us plan the work in phases to allow us to use the Church as much as possible. Parts of the work could start as early as next fall.

There are many challenges ahead but when this is done, the Church will be safe and able to serve many future generations.

There are two meetings in the next few weeks to answer questions about this and solicit input on other possible improvements. The first is on Tuesday, March 2 at 7:00 pm, and the next one is on Sunday March 7 at 12:15 pm. We welcome your comments and participation.