Happy Father’s Day to all Fathers, God Fathers and Father Figures! Your service is difficult but essential. Thank you, and may God, the Father of us all, bless you abundantly.
Today we also celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday. The Doctrine of the Trinity teaches us we will never have God figured out and captured in our human concepts. God is always beyond all our imagining, and that incomprehensibility of God is a great blessing. We will never exhaust the mystery of God.
In addition, I would like to bring you up to date on some of the continuing work to accomplish a mixed-use development on our property. While it has been quiet, much work has been going on.
There was a successful meeting on April 23 with parish and school staffs to get input on the needs and desires of what our new facilities would contain and look like. A similar meeting was conducted with about 30 school and parish leaders on Saturday May 4. William Gay, Mario Espinoza and Kelly Bodu Tarrant lead these meetings, which were helpful in establishing some priorities of what we need and want in a new building.
Our original statement of need was for 100,000 square feet of space for the parish/school (our portion of the building). Over the revi-sions from the developer that shrunk to 92,000. We objected, more work was done, and our portion is now 107,000 square feet. These are very basic floor plans that do not even show all door and window openings but show concepts that could work. As we move forward and the design for our spaces becomes more refined, we expect to have more opportunities for feedback.
A great deal of legal work has been done by parishioner Christopher Bell, who is on the Development Committee. We have engaged a top-notch land use attorney, Rick Reed, who is also a member of our community. Several drafts have gone back and forth on a pre-closing agreement, and we have settled on an “access and confidentiality agreement,” which is one of the first of many pieces of legal paperwork we will need. We are preparing for the developer, Greystar, to be able to do the title search, survey, and other due diligence on our site. We anticipate that occurring soon.
At a preliminary meeting with the Diocesan Finance Council on May 14, we realized that they needed more information, and we are now responding to them. We are now getting everyone on the same page and expect a positive result from their meeting on August 1. Mean-while, the Diocese has engaged two experts to deliver an objective opinion on the terms of the deal. Their assessments will form part of a package that will be sent to the Vatican later this year. Given the size of this agreement, it does require Vatican approval. Also, we have been in consultation with the Diocese of Austin about the financing of our portion of the project. While the bill for our new facilities will come due on completion, the income we receive from the ground rent to pay for our new buildings will come in over time. It will take about 40 years or so of ground lease payments to fully pay off the buildings and the cost of borrowing. The Diocese of Austin is working with us to arrange that loan.
Negotiations have continued and are progressing well with San Jose Parish off of Oltorf Street. That is where we plan to move the school during the time of demolition and construction on our site. They have everything we need and are anxious to have us join them for the duration of our pilgrimage off of our site.
Because we are not experts in this construction and development arena, we have hired a top-notch firm, American Realty Property Man-agement, to be our owner’s representative. Already their expertise has foreseen some problems and saved us time and money. I anticipate that they will be doing a lot more of that.
So there has been a lot of work going on. There is still much more to do. Please keep praying for all the people working on this project. It is humongous. Thank God we have so many very talented and extremely dedicated parishioners. More as things develop.
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