Please join me this Sunday, July 13th at 12:30pm (following the 11am Mass) in our parish hall for a POP Town Hall on our upcoming renovations and status of our “God’s House, Our Home” capital campaign.
There will be lots to update and discuss, but I will try to get people up to speed here as well. How did we get to this? Prince of Peace is always doing maintenance, but our last renovation was in 2016 for the adoration chapel and elevator to our hall. There have been small projects in years previous to 2016 for various needs (school admin, field building upgrade, circle drive). Every so often in vibrant parish life, there is need for such renovations. However, the last capital campaign was done in 2001 (24 years ago) for the school extension. That is a long time since we had a capital campaign.
In 2019, under the leadership of Fr. Jerry Volz, POP almost had a church renovation, but a big campaign for the Archdiocese hit at the same time, along with COVID, so our plans were delayed. I arrived in 2020, and once I settled in and the Archdiocese campaign was wrapping up, I knew POP had the opportunity to do something for ourselves. So in 2022, we began a master plan where architects and engineers looked over our whole campus, and we interviewed stakeholders on the pain points of our facilities. From this master plan, we presented cases in the summer of 2024 in a feasibility study for POP. You gave input—87% of folks supported doing something. Most supported was a church renovation and second most was re-allocating and upgrading spaces in church, hall, school, offices. From this, we decided to move forward with renovations.
We launched the “God’s House, Our Home” capital campaign in the Fall last year, began raising money behind the scenes with major donors, and had a public kick-off on December 1, 2024. Our campaign consultants believed we could raise at least $5M, and perhaps close to $6M (including some funds given by folks in the past for the altar). I am grateful to our campaign chairs - Steve and Lisa Cunningham, and Brian and Amy Lueger—for their leadership and for all the volunteers who have helped in the campaign. There have been several hundred personal appeals, multiple mailings, in-pew appeals, outreach, videos, and such. We still continue the campaign as we have not hit our goal and believe more will respond.
Currently, there have been 774 parish families who have responded to the campaign, pledging almost $4.7M (including previous altar fund). This amounts to about a 30% response of the parish, which in our current world is pretty amazing. Compared to the averages of other campaigns by our consultants, we have exceeded in most categories versus others. However, overall we still have come up short of our hoped for $6M goal. I do sincerely want to thank all our generous donors. I also ask all who are undecided to please strongly consider pledging and/or giving to the campaign.
In the meantime also we have been working on the design of the renovations. We have hired SFS Architects and Straub Construction. The plans are to renovate the Church, to build an new school cafeteria in the existing school basement to better re-allocate our space and improve security, and to build some new teacher restrooms in an area of school that has none. Right now, total construction costs are looking to cost around $5.8M. That is an issue as our fundraising has not achieved that. So, designs are looking at ways to cut some of those costs while we also try to fundraise in order to close the gap. Construction is planned to begin about April 20, 2026 and finish by December, 2026. We will have to close off the Church and have Masses in the gym. Most of the school construction will be done in summer.
There is much to share, but please come to the town hall to learn more and ask questions. Also, we will give our best ideas on what we might need to cut out of designs and you may give input. Again, I want to thank all who have contributed and volunteered and I implore all those who have to yet to respond to step up soon. It will make a difference so we can fully achieve our goals. May God bless you!
Peace,
Fr. Greg