Where Are We With the Building Project?
by Kathy Anderson

Behind the scenes, members of the Steering Committee and their subcommittees have been working steadily.  The Finance Committee has been preparing the presentations that were given to Bishop Aquila and the Diocesan board in March and May. The Worship Space Committee has been researching every aspect of a truly authentic Catholic church. The Communications Committee has been orchestrating a Door to Door Evangelization Campaign where every household within the boundaries of St. Katharine Drexel Parish will be invited to come worship with us. And the list goes on and on.

Recently, some exciting news has elevated us to the next phase of our project.  On May 9th, Bishop Aquilla, the Diocesan Finance Council and the Priest Consultors, gave Fr. Joe and representatives of our Building Finance Committee, the approval for our loan request!  Our team very skillfully and competently presented our plans to build a multipurpose church in the first phase of our building project.  They also presented a plan on how the loan for approximately $5 million would be repaid.  Now, with the positive response that we were hoping for, we can proceed full speed ahead with our building project.

Not only can we proceed full speed ahead, but we can proceed ahead more confidently after following the advice the Diocesan leaders gave us last March.  When our plan and request for the loan was originally made in March, we were asked to perform a feasibility study with our parishioners, to see if we could actually raise the $900,000 that we predicted we would need in our first 3- year capital campaign.  We were also asked to consider building a multipurpose gym before the actual church.  A private, non-biased group, the Cosgriff Company, was hired to perform the feasibility study.  The Cosgriff Company was also asked to poll the parish families with regard to their preference of building a church or multipurpose gym first, taking into account that the church would cost $5,366,536 and the multipurpose facility would cost $4,631,011.

The results of the Cosgriff study were amazing!  In their conclusion statement they wrote:  “This is one of the most positive feasibility studies our firm has been involved with in the last several years.”  In their study, a total of 45 personal interviews were conducted and the remaining 345 parishioners were mailed surveys.  Typically the Cosgriff Company gets a 15- 20% return rate on their mailed surveys.  Here at St. Katharine Drexel Parish, they received a 44% return rate, with even more surveys returned after the completion deadline.  When all the results were tabulated, the Cosgriff Company found that we could easily attain the $900,000 goal and suggested that we aim for $1,200,000.  They found that 96% of those personally interviewed and 81% of those who returned the mail survey want the church to be built first. 

The Cosgriff Company also noted the following positive attributes of our parish:

• an extremely popular pastor, backed by a highly regarded staff
• over 150 parishioners already involved in the building and planning of the new structure
• top leadership already involved and many others willing to participate at whatever level is asked of them
• a fantastic track record of parish giving with a major pledge of $640,000 to SHARE, 50% of it’s receipts given to the Diocesan school, over $15,000 given to charities and $85,000 saved for the building program
• location in a growth area of Sioux Falls with many new parishioners predicted to come with the presence of a new facility
• a strong desire and ability of parishioners to move the project forward

The next steps in the building process will include listening sessions with our parishioners, where surveys will be filled out to collect parishioners’ input on the design preference of our worship space. We will then begin the selection of an architect, designing the facility and raising the money.  Our plan is to begin building next spring and perhaps even doing some of the initial site preparation late this fall. The project should be completed in 2008. As always, we ask that each of our parishioners continues to lift this project up in prayer. Please use your St. Katharine Drexel Parish prayer cards and ask God to guide us and protect us, as we move forward in creating a structure that will honor Him.