On Wednesday 30th October, we officially handed over the Rosebank site to local building firm HRS. This was a big occasion, marked by representatives of the Church Trust and project staff attending a pre-handover meeting to not only discuss the practicalities of the handover process, but pray over the site and the upcoming building works.
We are still waiting on building consent to be received from the council, there is one technical request for information regarding the caps for the piling that requires some more input from an engineer. We are praying that this will be closed out as soon as possible so the construction programme can get underway, or that council will provide approval for us to undertake demolition works, knowing that we will resolve the issue.
A special meeting was held by Latimer Church on Sunday 27th October with the aim of the Latimer Church Trustees to determine the support of the congregation to take a loan out of up to $2m if needed. The church were presented before the meeting with a project overview document, that details the history of the project in its various phases, as well as a summary of what the meeting was for. This can be found here. Many questions were asked during this meeting, and it ended with the vast majority support to proceed with the contract, understanding that if necessary a loan may need to be sought.
As Latimer will be moving to a new area of the city (Belfast), starting with the construction of a new building which may be disturbing to the neighbors, we will be doing a letter drop to everyone in the community to introduce ourselves and tell them who we are and what is happening! If you would like to assist with this mail drop, please email barnaby@latimerchurch.nz