Seward United Methodist Church is just weeks away from breaking ground on its Gather and Grow Addition project.
One of the biggest changes the project will bring is a new main entrance. The entrance will have a covering and will not have any stairs leading up to it, making it more wheelchair friendly.
“People will be able to pull straight into a new loop out in the front and drop people off right at the front door,” Pastor Jo Ellen Axthelm said.
The Bright Beginnings Child Development Center will get a new office and a new classroom. There will be new parking spaces and a new entrance on the south side of the building, which will serve as BBCDC’s main drop-off spot.
“Right now, they come up where there’s other traffic in the parking lot,” Axthelm said. “With their own entrance, we’re hoping will make it a lot safer and friendlier.”
The building’s main entrance will be in the line of sight of the administrator’s office, and its south entrance will lead kids right by the director’s office. This will make both entrances more secure.
The expansion also includes adding more bathrooms, including handicap-accessible bathrooms and a family bathroom. Axthelm said the current bathrooms are located far from the main entrance and the sanctuary, making it difficult for the older population to get to them.
“We’re adding things that are really needed and will help make the building a lot more accessible, safe, welcoming and inviting,” Axthelm said.
Axthelm said she is looking forward to the new spaces that the expansion will create, including a new gathering space, which she hopes will provide for better fellowship before and after worship.
“Right now, people have to come down a hallway and then down another hallway to get to the fellowship hall so they can have fellowship,” she said. “A lot of people will probably stay and gather in the new welcoming space, which will be much larger so people can visit.”
The groundbreaking ceremony will be on June 5, and the project is expected to be completed sometime at the beginning of 2023, said Pastor Mary Kay Totty.
Totty has been part of planning the expansion for nearly two years.
“I was appointed to the church on July, 1 of 2020, and within a few weeks, I was approached by members of the congregation who were eager for this project. So, the Building Improvement Committee started meeting every week,” Totty said.
After the committee completed the design phase of the project in February of 2022, the congregation voted to approve the project.
Scheele-Kayton Construction is the contractor and Clark Enerson Partners is the architectural firm for the project.
“We really appreciate Tim Rogers, the architect who has been working on this,” Totty said.
Totty said she has had a wonderful time working on the project with the church’s Building Improvement Committee.
“The chairperson, Tom Hansen, brings lots of expertise to a project like this, and the congregation has been supportive,” she said. “It’s been a lot of work, but it has not been burdensome work. It has been work that I’ve looked forward to being a part of all along.”
