First Floor & Kitchen Renovations: We have contracted with BCK IBI architects (including our own Bill Sands), who will lead us through a study on a new design for the kitchen, the office, and the first floor—particularly addressing the bathrooms and the mold issue in the chapel. We have two teams of church members and staff who are meeting with the architects to tell them how we would like these areas to function before we get into any design elements. There will be a time where we will open it up for discussion and comments from the congregation in the fall.

Parking: Parking in downtown Binghamton has become increasingly difficult with the garage closures and the influx of BU student apartments. To avoid paying street parking, people have begun parking in our lot, which has caused many of the people who work or have programs here in our building to not have a place to park. We have come up with a potential solution of having hang-tag permits for our members and our building renters or program users. Different groups will have different colors so that our staff can quickly identify who is using our lot when, which will help us continue to develop a parking plan. But in the short run, anyone without a permit will get one warning and if they park again, will be towed. We greatly hope that this will discourage outside vehicles from using our lot during our busy times. Be on the lookout for more on this in the near future. We will need your help to implement this by having everyone have a hangtag in their car. We will also need some people to help at the desk in the first month to help register hang tags to regular users. We would like this process to be as easy as possible for everyone.