Exciting News from the Board of Trustees!
The Board of Trustees and the Building Design Team is close to hiring an architecture firm for our future church home, pending a legal review of the contract!
As described by co-chair Gary Herli in a report to the Board (paraphrased here), the Building Design Team (BDT) has been very busy over the past several months! They formed an Architecture Sub Team, an Annexation Sub Team and a Visioning Sub Team. The Architecture Sub Team researched 29 local architects experienced with churches and non-profits. They conducted phone interviews with architectural candidates to gauge interest, and toured four UU churches in our area with recent expansion and remodeling: Boulder Valley UU Fellowship in Lafayette, First Universalist in Denver, First Unitarian in Denver, and Foothills Unitarian in Fort Collins.
The BDT requested information from eight architects who were truly interested in our project, and used their responses to narrow the pool down to the top four candidates, who were interviewed at UUCB.
A second round of interviews were then held with the top two candidates at the architects’ offices, and the Building Design Team visited buildings designed by the firms. The BDT consulted references for both companies, which were all very positive.
Earlier this month, the BDT presented their top two candidates to the Board while recommending one as the primary candidate. The top architecture firm’s attributes included being leaders in sustainability, capable of better cost and schedule control as the only Design/Build firm we considered, experience in leading Visioning and extensive experience in Boulder over 35 years. They also published lower hourly rates and were the only architect to publish a large amount of design at fixed price.
This architecture firm has gone the extra mile to produce detailed cost and schedule estimates, to answer our followup questions, and to accommodate our suggestions to our contract with them. They’ve already met with the Annexation and Visioning SubTeams and provided pro bono guidance.
On Oct. 9th the Building Design Team, the Board of Trustees, and the Architecture team met for the first time. The Board had the opportunity to ask questions of the Architecture team, and do a mini visioning session with them. We were very impressed by the team’s expertise and values, which dovetail with UU values. Pending a legal review of their contract with us, we anticipate being any to introduce them to you soon as the architecture firm that will be working with UUCB to create our new church home!
In Faith,
the UUCB Board
President Steve Todd
Incoming President Robin Miller
Past President Cathy Edwards
Trustee Kaitlin Abbitt
Trustee Nicole Ball
Trustee Janet Evans
Trustee Joe Polman
