Chapel Move
Chapel Update
In case you haven’t noticed, Green’s chapel has moved back across the street to our property. It’s that large, white building approximately 20 feet east of our main building. We did the final move in December, 2007. The chapel move would have never happened if not for the efforts of Sue Werner, who believed in the power of “can do” thinking. When the City of Kirkland denied our request for variances, Sue called the local newspapers and television news stations and asked if any of them were willing to broadcast this story to the local community. The response was incredible. King 5 TV and the King County Journal both carried the story; we were even featured on the front page of the 9/17 Sunday newspaper! Sue also contacted the state historical society and found Chris Moore, who has helped us understand how to leverage the historical building codes in this project. This was the leverage that we needed to renegotiate talks with the City of Kirkland. Eric Shields, the director of planning, has been instrumental in working with us to cut through the red tape and get the variances we needed to lower our overall project costs and make the project viable again.
On October 12th, we moved the chapel to our property. It was a gorgeous day, and many people joined us to watch the move. There are great photos of the move on the NUUC website, courtesy of Amar Singh. And Sue has put together an amazing historical account of the chapel. Ask her about how the Lutherans dug the original basement by hand! I want to thank Sue, Chris and the Chapel committee for making this project work. And to the Northlake Board for giving us the green light, knowing that we will exceed the original request for funds. And special kudos to CamWest / Bruce Knowlton, the owners of Green’s Chapel, for giving us additional time to work on a solution for bringing the chapel back to Northlake. They have been fantastic to work with.
Brian Goldstein
Chapel Project Manager