Completing the Dream:Beth El Temple Center Sanctuary Renovation

People have asked how can we bid a project if there are still decisions to be made? This is a really good question and we should have explained.

In the building industry this is done all the time in many forms.

In our case the major cost considerations have been described in a way that allows us to bid while continuing to make decisions. This is done in a number of ways:

First, the item in question is specified in a way the contractor know what to price – but before it is actually purchased will need more information. When bidding a project, some items are completely specified – such as the type of window, but often other parts of things are specified in ways that allow decisions to be made. Take the window example – you can say it is an Anderson 500 window with low E glass that can stand a gale force of 100 mph and has to meet certain test criteria, and then say that the provided window should be priced in the manufacturers premium line of 25 colors. So in the case of carpeting – the contractors are bidding a quality of carpet, but it still gives us plenty of time to actually pick the carpet because the contract documents say something to the affect of provide an allowance for any carpet of a certain quality up to a certain monetary value.

Second, we are buying direct. In the case of the chairs and the pews – we have decided not to include these in the contract with the General Contractor – rather we will purchase directly from the manufacturer. Save on overhead. This is true with the Torah table, lectern and some other miscellaneous items. Our architect will be working directly with the woodworkers.

Why haven’t we delayed the project?

First, the longer we delay cost go up. Inflation, material and interest rates are only going up.

Second, we have already told B’nai Mitzvah family and weddings they need to make alternative plans – people in April are already counting on using the space.

Third, we are really ready to go – it may seem like critical things need to be decided but actually the last couple decisions are visually important but not critical to the project.

A couple people have asked what is going on with the renovation so I thought it important to update the blog with what is keeping the Renovation Oversight Committee busy. We have basically been dealing with a number of techinical issues to keep things moving. There are a number of design issues that still need to be addressed that we will endeavor to keep everyone informed of when we get through this technical bottleneck.

We have NOT made any final decisions on chairs, carpeting, ark design, torah table design, colors and a few other miscellaneous items. The committee will be meeting through out the summer with the architect to finalize these items and at some point we will hold an open forum to update the congregation.

1. Contractor bidding – Contractors are in the process of bidding the construction documents – we have scheduled a number of times where members of the committee and the architect are available for the contractors to come by the temple and carefully examine existing conditions and ask questions. Believe it or not this takes a lot of time trying to keep everyone interested in our project. Just because we have contractors bidding the project doesn’t mean all the design decisions have been made – some of these items will be sub-contracted separately or the contractors have been given enough information to price the work without the final design.

2. Finance – the committee (especially Jayne Grudberg-Mocera) has been working with the Capital campaign and the finance committee to double check the accounting to balance how much money has been received by the capital campaign and plan for how money will be allocated during the renovation. They have been working with banks to find the most competitive loan during construction to bridge the time until all the capital campaign pledges come in and the loan the Board of Trustees voted to take to make up the shortfall. We really appreciate the hard work of the both the finance committee and the Capital Campaign.

3. Contracts – the process of coming up with a construction contract is technically complicated and very important to protect the liability of the entire congregation. We are very lucky to have pro bono legal work from congregant.

4. Permitting, surveying and insurance – we are coordinating the logistics of the project with the Town of Belmont in order to make sure our permits will run smoothly. We needed a new survey for the Town and were lucky that the grandson of a past president (Harry Feldman) was able to to help us out pretty much at cost to get this done. At the same time we have been reviewing the Temple’s insurance policies to make sure we are adequately covered during the renovation and beyond.

5. Cleaning out the sanctuary. We are planning how to record the legacy, honor the past and make sure the sanctuary is properly prepped. Thanks must go to our extremely capable office staff lead by Marie Bustard who have anticipated this along with our hard working custodial crew. Irving Gerber has also been extremely helpful in finding a home for our old pews and making sure they get reused in a worthy new worship space.  Much still needs to be done and in late June a work day will be scheduled to clean up.

If you have questions before we are able to schedule a forum please post them and the Committee will try to answer them here. Remember we are all working hard to do the right thing try to be pleasant!

We are hoping to begin construction in mid-July.