FriSep112009
With the significant growth God has graciously brought Harvest London we now need almost double the building size we needed when we began our search for a building.
So we have adjusted the numbers below to reflect what we think we need as of summer of 2010.
Right now these are all just estimated budget numbers. Things will firm
up as we move ahead. Currently we have budgeted $750,000-$1.5M
for land and an additional approximate $4-$6 million to build and
make ready for use a building. This is a scaled down version of a church building as we are shooting for about $100/sq ft. Most church buildings cost between $175 and $225/sq ft. So currently we think we need a 50,000 sq. ft. building - hence about $5M to build and ready for ministry - just for the building.
(Update as of 2011 - due to continued amazing growth we now need a 60,000 square foot building and thus our total project cost - building, land, parking lot, fees, etc. is about $7-8M).
We engaged an architect to draft some initial building ideas just so
we could determine how much building we needed (square footage) for
how much ministry we have going on. We have based our estimates
on this early work.
This is a lot of money and our desire is to steward it with that thought
in mind. But compared to other church builds in London we are
hoping to do this on the very inexpensive end. West Park spent
about $10 million on their building and Forest City and Gateway each
spent around $5 million. Absolutely nothing wrong with what they
have spent but we wanted to share this to encourage you that our approach
is seeking to be a low end, simple, basic, functional building.