Grace on the Move

PRAYER LIST

2011-01-27T14:19:00.000-08:00

Here is a list of items that you could be praying for, as you can see it is in order of priority. As prayers are answered I will highlight them. Thank you for your on going prayers.

1. Building permit.

A. Submit plans to city for review and permit approval

B. Pay building permit fees.

2. Site work and underground.

A. Rough grading and dirt work for building pads, fields and amphitheater.

B. Underground utilities – electrical, gas, water (Cal Water), sewer and storm drains, etc.

C. Irrigation well improvements and irrigation system.

D. Concrete curb, gutters and sidewalks.

E. Street and parking lot paving (partial).

3. Administration building.

A. Building pad completion and compaction.

B. Concrete slab poured.

C. Framing, truss set and roofing.

D. Rough installation of electrical, plumbing, HVAC, gas, alarm, etc.

E. Windows and doors.

F. Stucco exterior and drywall interior.

G. Utility finishes, built-ins and interior details

H. Paint and finish work interior, color coat exterior.

I. Flooring and finish work.

4. Landscape and maintenance building.

A. Begin landscape planting and final irrigation of Cherry Avenue, lovers Lane and around administration building.

B. Build maintenance/storage building.

5. Existing campus renovation.

6. Ministry sports field.

7. Amphitheater.

EXCITING NEWS ABOUT THE NEW PROPERTY

2011-01-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

If you have been keeping up with the goings on for the new property lately you'll notice that not much has been published about what is going on, that doesn't mean that things are not happening, and we are working on ways to improve the communications to you. Look forward to great things happening very soon.
Now for a update on what is going on. Last time I mentioned the California Watering Ordinance was causing some delays in our moving forward, well we have had a numerous meetings with our landscape architect and have now have a landscape plan that will meet the requirements of the ordinance and not make our campus look like a desert.
One of the issues with the ordinance is the amount of water we will be allowed to irrigate all the landscaping and where will that water come from? We have been working with a pump company to determine if we can use the existing ag well that is on the property for all our landscape irrigation needs. It turns out that our well is usable and that it will produce a conservative 250 gallons per minute but that volume is insufficient to meet our total needs. The amount of water that we will have available also effect the overall design of the irrigation system and subsequent cost. With the help of our landscape architect and Dennis Whistler, our architect, we brainstormed ideas and came up with a plan for watering that we can use the existing well volume, at least for several years but it involves getting the city to allow us to water 6 days a week instead of 3 days per the cities watering ordinance. Many of you are probably aware of the odd address, even address watering schedule in the city.
We have had a letter drafted and submitted to the city for several weeks asking for a variance to their watering schedule or allow us to establish a second address for the site. We have yet to hear back from them. The letter indicates that the original use of the property was for about 150 single family homes to be built which would have both even and odd address that would allow for 6 watering days of all the properties. As a single entity, the church would not use as much water as 150 homes but only has one address and that would limit us to 3 days to irrigate all the landscaping. Our current well would not be able to meet that watering schedule to keep everything alive and growing, thus we would have to drill a new well at an expense of around $75,000.00. This would a "hardship" for our church.
I am asking you to pray that the city will allow us a variance or that we can have a second address for the property to help save our resources. We have seen God working in this move all ready with the planning committee and the city council, we know God will listen to our prayers.
Thank you for your prayers and I will have more in the near future.
Jim Wood

New Campus Prayer Summit This Saturday

2011-01-04T21:41:00.000-08:00

Church leadership has set the date for a new campus prayer summit. The prayer summit will be held on January 8, 2011 at 8:00 am in the sanctuary. The summit will be attended by the Elder board, the Deacon board, the NCCT committee and the pastoral staff. The purpose of the summit is to collectively pray for the new campus project and to seek God's wisdom with regards to the new campus. It is important to the leaders of the church to hear from God as we proceed in expanding His kingdom. Please pray for the Prayer Summit and the leadership of the church as we seek to hear from God this Saturday.

New Campus Update

2010-10-04T14:47:00.000-07:00

Her it is October all ready and the site still looks the same. That doesn't mean there are not things happening. We have been working through the summer months on several plan issues that needed more attention than anticipated.
The major one is the new state of California Landscape Irrigation Ordinance that went into affect January of this year. It requires that water usage for the entire site be designed in accordance to this ordinance and it limits the amount of water we can use. This requires that we develop a full landscape plan for the entire site, that entails actually selecting all the plants, trees, bushes, turf etc we will use to make our campus beautiful. Once selected we have to determine each plants watering requirement, add it all up and make sure we do not go over the water allotment on the site.
The other part to this water issue is the existing ag well that is on the site and determining if we can get enough water to meet our landscape needs. Some of you may have driven by the site last week and notice the pump company testing the well. We now have good information about the well that we can add to the watering plan to help move things forward. Thank you all for your prayers and patience.

Mother's Day in the Land

2010-06-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

Our Mother's day and ground breaking was a big success with several city dignitaries attending, past charter members of the church and special guest Pastor Westbrook who actually started GCC on Lovers Lane almost 30 years ago. Mayor Bob Link expressed on behalf of the city what a great occasion this was and how it will be a great addition to this area of the city. Please look at the photos of the celebration, they are better than what words can express here.

Mother's Day in the Land Preparations

2010-06-07T17:22:00.000-07:00

THIS post is to update from previous postings:
Mother's Day and ground breaking planning is underway and is coming right along. The NCCT committee are meeting jointly with the pastoral staff to coordinate all aspects of the event. Brett Wells will begin the dirt work the Monday before the event, the Deacon Board decided to purchase new indoor/outdoor carpet for under the tent, the new carpet will be used to replace some of the old carpet used for beach camps. NCCT committee members have contacted the city to invite the mayor and city council.

Annual Business Meeting - New site

2010-06-07T17:13:00.000-07:00

This post is to get the blog site caught up since my last post.
Annual Business Meeting held on January31, 2010
At our annual business meeting there was some exciting news about our new campus project. Pastor Jon showed drawings of the proposed new GCC property and explained to the congregation that it is time to "Enter the Land". We will have ground breaking for the new campus to be held at the new site on Mothers Day, Sunday May 9, 2010 under the tent. A number of questions were asked and answered by Pastor Jon and Jim Wood. Pastor Jon also discussed the phases of the project, that we will start on phase 1A, the administration building as required by the city council, at a cost of about 1.6 million dollars and that we have have most of that money all ready in the bank so we will not need to do any capitol fund raising at this time.

Update after All Church Meeting

2009-10-27T11:24:00.000-07:00

I would like to thank everyone who attended the All Church Meeting on October 11th, I hope that the information and testimony was helpful in getting to know me and were I feel God is leading our church. I do want to hear from you with comments about the evening.
I am sure some of you were wanting to ask questions that evening, there will be a better opportunity at our next meeting in January for you to ask those questions so please hold them till then or you can post them here if you would like. I am not sure we will have the answers to some of the questions just yet but we are trying to get that information as we proceed with the plans. Speaking of plans, we are moving forward with finalizing the floor plan of the administration building. Dennis Whistler has had 2 meetings with pastors and staff to look over and adjust the original floor plan that was developed about 5 years ago. In 5 years we have had some changes that needed to be addressed. We should have the final floor plan by this week. As soon as it is finalized I will post it here.

First All Church Meeting

2009-09-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

Our first of several All Church Meetings will be on Sunday, October 11, 2009, in the sanctuary at 6:00 PM.

What is Grace on the Move

2009-08-20T17:57:00.001-07:00

Grace on the Move is your place to find out what is going on with the our new campus development project located at Lovers lane and Cherry Avenue for Grace Community Church of Visalia. Here you can see architectural renderings, site plans and more, find out information about phasing of the project, learn about what we are doing, where we are at and where we are going. As we develop more details the more we will include so keep checking back for our projects progress.

Architectural Renderings

2009-08-20T16:34:00.000-07:00