St. Francis Church - They just discovered the steeple was a step above dust?
Friday, November 13th, 2009I was called today to read about this “new” development in the restoration project of the Church. Here is a link to the story on Metroland.
“Repairs will cost Ajax an extra $250,000 on a multi-million dollar project”
“Mayor Parish said although he’d rather the problem didn’t exist, there was no way it could have been foreseen.”
hmmmm , not so fast.
You read about the Church Window issue here last year. I had asked some questions to a member of the Church Community, here is a small excerpt.
1a)Would the Town have purchased the Church without windows?
This is a question that should be asked of the Town.
We do know that the historical designation of the building highlighted the Stained Glass windows and the Steeple. This designation was declared after our Steering Committee began the design process and made it publicly known that our intent was to take the Stained Glass with us. In fact, we made the commitment to our faith community that the Stained Glass windows would be used as a testament to our heritage.
We also investigated with our architect the possibility of retaining the bell tower, but it was cost prohibitive, and the consultant said that so much of the old brick work would have needed to be replaced that essentially it would become a replica of the original.
We were not surprised. Why is the Town saying they are surprised. They were told. Cost Prohibitive is relevant to the money you want to spend, what is prohibitive to you may not be to someone else , the Church was aware the brickwork in the steeple was so bad it would have to be rebuilt.
If an architect who did not actually get on a scaffold know , why didn’t the sole source architect the Town of Ajax hired know the steeple would have to be rebuilt ?
This happens in so many projects, a bid is made then later it is amended due to unforeseen costs.