Irene Stewart, Peter Young, Sherry Smith,
Suzette Reiss, Mark Sisson, Beth Peterson

Arrived at 7:30 pm: Peter Marren, Bill Gorman and invited guest: Stacy Paetzel [Marshall Paetzel Landscape Architecture, PC (mplastudio.com)]

Irene called the meeting to order at 7:06 pm.

Minutes from 11/3, 11/10 and 11/17 were accepted with amendments.

Irene instituted a discussion re: keeping Building Team discussions private until such time as they would be disseminated to the membership. The Team agreed.

Donya has kindly offered to continue with the “Key Points” statements for the Free Spirit and distribution at services, at least for the time being.

It was decided that Mark would make a brief announcement about our progress at the service of 12/4.

Peter Marren, Bill Gorman, and Stacy Paetzel arrived and they and the Team (from now on, the architects and builder will be included in the term “Team” unless noted otherwise) engaged in a discussion of our project. Mr. Marren inquired whether Bill Moore had been in touch with the Team about the contract. It was unknown whether Mr. Moore had or had not read it.

Mr. Marren contacted Ms. Paetzel to become involved in preparation of a site plan. In his discussions with the town, it was determined that the new building will not have to exactly mimic the footprint of our old church; both buildings can be “rotated” on site. Mr. Marren feels the orientation of the building is crucial to the completion of the site plan. He feels to maximize potential on our site, a landscape architect is a preferable option over a civil engineer. “The more details included in a site plan, the more likely problems can be identified and dealt with prior to the start of construction.” Both he and Mr. Gorman stated that while an engineer could perform this work (site plan preparation), a landscape architect could present more aesthetically pleasing options and that costs would be comparable. Ms. Paetzel’s office could not complete a septic system design, however, but Mr. Marren assured the Team that this should present no challenge and that it would have minimal cost to complete.

The Team then refined our discussion of options for placement of the Church buildings. It was determined that the original siting (front door facing directly onto Main Road) was unsuitable for the new plan. The Team discussed pros and cons of several “degrees of rotation” for the church and are narrowing our options to having the door face up Tucker’s Lane or having the building parallel Main Road. The Team was asked to mull over these options and their advantages/disadvantages. The Team also discussed options available with the Blue House, involving Ms. Paetzel and her expertise, especially in light of her devising a site plan.

The Team also discussed Mr. Marren’s “Descriptive Words,” again involving Ms. Paetzel in the discussion. This lends itself to both sides of our Team becoming comfortable with one another and will enhance the design phase of our project. Ms. Paetzel then excused herself from the remainder of the meeting, taking a copy of the “Words” list and other materials to do some preliminary sketches.

The Team began considering the interior of the Sanctuary; chairs vs. benches, height of the pulpit platform, whether there would be a center aisle, with or without aisles along the walls, two aisles similar to what we had previously, etc. Mr. Marren presented drawings that showed all options with number of available seats. The Team agreed that seating in the Sanctuary should be movable, but deferred choosing chairs or benches until later. Mr. Marren will be visiting the week of December 5 with a bench manufacturer and will have more details available later.

Our next meeting was tentatively scheduled for December 8.

Meeting adjourned at 9:25.