David Scheie, OSLC Property Project CoordinatorDuring Pastor Martha’s sabbatical, I am coordinating our congregation’s involvement in the many facets of our campus redevelopment project. Work has continued during April on several fronts:
0 Comments
Pastor Martha I’m so glad many of you came to the March 18 congregational update. Thanks to dedicated work from so many of you, we are now making concrete our commitment in 2019 to develop and implement a plan for our property! We had a very successful retreat with OSCS on March 2, and reported out to all of you our shared direction and the shared investments we are making as we move forward with reimagining our shared campus.
I also want to name folks who will continue to be in leadership during my sabbatical (and beyond). · David Scheie will be the lead liaison with Mike Huffman and OSCS, will be involved in working with the development consultant who we plan to hire by April 15, and will share updates with the congregation on our blog and in person. He may have pop up ‘office hours’ when you can drop by for conversation. Please reach out to David if you’d like to connect ([email protected]). · The Joint Property Committee will continue to meet. This group meets about every-other week and includes Tal Anderson, David Scheie, Rico Morales (and Pastor Martha when not on sabbatical) from OSLC, and Mike Huffman (ED), Qually Neal (OSH Program Director), Renate Willer (Operations Manager), and Robin Stramp (Development and Communications Manager) from OSCS. · The core committee for a capital campaign will work with Fundraising Sol on the pre-feasibility phase. Church council will vote to officially appoint the committee at our April 7 meeting. So far, OSLC participants include Jim Unglaube, Mike Troutman, David Scheie, Pastor Martha and from OSCS Mike Huffman and Robin Stramp. As we move along, there will be several ad hoc committees who meet together for shorter periods of time. · Relationship-building around our reparations commitments and climate equity work – Allyson Green will take the lead in connecting with some Phillips neighborhood leaders to help us further discern how we might bring a reparations lens to our campus, particularly on the Elliot Avenue side. She and the reparations team have a vision for connecting with these leaders and their organizations over meals in the coming months. Amy Blumenshine will take the lead working with Unidos MN to explore how OSLC might be an anchor for a block-by-block clean energy transition that is part of the Minneapolis Climate Equity plan. She and others may have some neighborhood outreach opportunities related to this work, so stay tuned! · An OSLC space needs group will continue to help us refine our vision for our church building and grounds. Over these months, they may do field trips to other churches who have spaces and designs that we like and can learn from. The leaders in this group include Eric Molho, Nancy Johnson, and Jakob Johnson. Other members, including Jim Johnson and Mike Libby, have met with Mary Preus about other improvements and investments to consider around lighting and tech. Pastor Martha March 2024 Retreat with OSCS on March 2
On Saturday March 2, OSLC church council members, OSCS board members, and members of the joint OSCS/OSLC property committee and will be gathering for an all-day retreat, facilitated in part by Sara Joy Proppe, a development consultant who worked with Calvary Lutheran on their project. We hope to make some key decisions about the direction we are heading for reimagining our campus, addressing questions including: what will the essential elements be, how will we phase development of different parcels on campus, what will our decision-making structure be, and when will we hire a development consultant. The OSLC church council members attending the retreat include: Allyson Green, Paula Keller, Tal Anderson, Aneesa Parks, Mike Troutman, and both pastors. OSLC members who serve on the joint property committee include: Rico Morales, David Scheie, Tal Anderson, Renate Willer (though she is wearing her OSCS operations manager hat), and myself. Many OSLC members have contributed significant work to get us to this point, including members of the OSLC/OSCS joint property committee and leaders in the OSLC property study work group that began in January and has continued through February in various subgroups. We have taken congregational and neighborhood input in many forms over the last couple of years. All of these discerning conversations and research work have contributed to strong preparation for a positive March 2 retreat. One piece we are bringing to the March 2 retreat is a list of our top key objectives for our reimagined property campus. The January property development study group discerned these goals as our top 4:
On Sunday March 17, we will have a special 30 minute worship service – which will include the baptism of Sebastian Lau! – followed by time for the whole congregation to receive a thorough update from Pastor Martha, Mike Huffman and other leaders about where we are at with our property project. We will share about the outcomes of the retreat on March 2 and invite your questions and input towards next steps. Worship will be from 10:30 – 11am, with the property update from 11am – noon. We will move to Zoom for the property update; a link will be sent out in the Sunday morning email on March 17. Invitation for Your Input by March 15 – Via Google Form, and/or Boards in Narthex Between now and March 15, please give your input about what kind of spaces we need for congregational ministries in the coming 25+ years. You can fill out our Google Form by using this link. Or, you can add your thoughts at church – you will find interactive bulletin boards set up for you to engage and mark up with your opinions and wonderings. They have already been up for a couple of weeks – thanks to everyone who has already weighed in! We’d love to hear from as many folks as possible. We will share back what we heard at the March 17 congregational property update. Property Project Blog is coming (you are reading it right now :-)) We are working on creating a blog dedicated to our property project on our website, so that any time you feel like you need more information on our property project with OSCS, you can go there and catch up on all the news. That’s a lot. And – it’s exciting that things are moving along! Please reach out with any questions to myself or to members of the joint property committee (David Scheie, Tal Anderson, Rico Morales, Renate Willer). Pastor Martha February 2024 Over the 5 weeks of January, we had a marvelous crew of members show up weekly for a property development study group. We began our work with a devotion using Genesis 1. Where is the creative activity of God already at work among us, present here and in relationships with our neighbors? How can our property project magnify that? These are questions we can return to as we prayerfully continue in this work.
Over the 5 weeks, we highlighted our key objectives and needs for the project, surfaced some strategic alternatives, and listed out some evaluation criteria. We had small groups research various sub-topics to help us go deeper and learn from other projects. These sub-groups have focused on housing (rental and home ownership possibilities), climate innovation/design, landback and reparatory development, ‘think outside the box’ group, and church building/LVC’s future group. Five weeks is a rich time, and as we have made progress, we also know we have more work to do to get ready for a retreat with OSCS on March 2. At that retreat, a small group from OSLC church council, OSCS board, and the joint property committee – about 15-20 folks in total – will come together and hope to coalesce around a common vision for the campus. We are welcoming Sara Joy Proppe of The Proximity Project, a development consultant, to help facilitate the retreat. She comes to us highly recommended from Calvary Lutheran Church down the street, as she worked with them to steward along their property project. She also worked with us at our last property development study group meeting. Members of the joint property committee are also laying more groundwork for future work ahead, including continuing conversations with Normandale Housing (who own a house on Chicago in the middle of the campus), pursuing capital campaign bids so we are ready to have partners to work with when we’re ready to begin that phase of this project, engaging in a free design event with volunteer architects to workshop some possibilities, and continuing to show up in the neighborhood. We are mindful that as we keep going, we need to loop back to neighbors, as community engagement isn’t a ‘one and done’ thing, but a relational process. I hope many of you can join us on February 4 for the forum. If you can’t make it, or have other ideas and insights you’d like to share, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or members of the joint property committee, which includes me, David Scheie, Rico Morales, Tal Anderson, and Renate Willer along with OSCS representation.... David Scheie January 2024 Progress continues in our work to redevelop our campus for higher and better use. A Joint OSLC/ OSCS Property Committee has been meeting biweekly for months to guide efforts. Recently, congregation treasurer Tal Anderson and I joined the committee. It now has eight members: three with joint OSLC/OSCS affiliation (Pastor Martha, Rico Morales who’s an OSLC member and OSCS resident, and Renate Willer who’s an OSLC member and OSCS operations manager); three with OSCS affiliation (executive director Mike Huffman, housing program director La’Quadra Neal, and development & communications manager Robin Stramp); and Tal and I who are OSLC members.
Highlights to date An important early stage occurred last spring and summer when we conducted a neighborhood inreach campaign. About 20 congregation members plus several OSCS staff were trained in 1:1 conversations by our own Grant Stevensen. Then we did listening conversations with over 30 people who live or work near the church, to learn their hopes and concerns for the neighborhood, our two organizations, and how best to use our half-city block. On October 15, we held a “Property Reimagining Forum” at church to review what we learned through the neighborhood inreach and to surface ideas and cautions from church members. Pastor Martha and Mike have networked with a range of people and organizations experienced in congregational housing and community development projects. These include Hans Lee, who was pastor of Calvary Lutheran Church at Chicago and 39th when that congregation decided to partner with Trellis Company, Simpson Housing Services, and the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority to create 41 units of affordable and supportive housing on its property. Another has been City of Lakes Community Land Trust, one of OSLC’s reparations grantees, which uses the land trust model of affordable homeownership. They’ve approached Normandale Housing Corporation and Normandale Lutheran Church in Edina, who own and operate the house beside our church as supportive family housing, about cooperating with our project. They’ve spoken with neighborhood indigenous leaders and others about possible participation as well. Many possibilities – and a commitment to act We face many options and questions. What kind of housing, for what size and type of households, shall we develop? What other spaces for congregational ministries, OSCS operations, and other community programming (e.g. childcare) do we want to include? How about green space? Parking space? How can we redevelop with a racial equity and reparations lens? What about the financing – where will the money for this come from? Should the congregation expect a revenue stream from the project to support other ministries? We are conscientious about exploring these many possibilities -- and we want to make reasonable choices in timely fashion so that a decent project actually gets done. As the saying goes, we don’t want the perfect to become the enemy of the good. The Joint Property Committee is aiming to make key design decisions by early March: we will hold a retreat on March 2 for this purpose. Next steps: you’re invited! To get us – and the congregation – ready, we are launching twin ventures in January. We encourage all Our Saviour’s members who care about what we do with our campus to participate in one or both:
Please RSVP for the study group, or share questions by contacting Tal Anderson ([email protected], 612-251-8313) or David Scheie ([email protected], 612-232-2912) January 2024 We will take time to listen to one another on these 2 questions: What do we as a congregation need from this property reimagining/redevelopment process? When the project is complete, how will we know we have been successful? We would love to have as many of you present as possible. Please read David Scheie’s article for some information about our discernment timeline and how this conversation fits into the whole picture.
Pastor Martha December 2023 We have started piecing together a ‘property reimagining timeline’ in the Narthex Hallway.
Please take time to visit this space! You will see that next to the timeline, we have space for people to draw and add their visions for our property on a property map coloring sheet. So far, our Sunday school kids have contributed the most ideas! We will be taking our property discernment to the next stage during forums in January and February. Update on Our Property Visioning work Hear more in person at our 9am adult forum on October 153/13/2024 Pastor Martha October 2023 I am excited to share with all of you a report on where we’re at in our ongoing work to re-imagine our campus jointly with Our Saviour’s Community Services. Our initial steps have been guided by a couple of our core commitments as a congregation – 1. To continue in partnership with OSCS and claim shared responsibility for this work on a property planand 2. To engage deeply with our neighbors. So far, these have been the main steps in our journey:
We are planning a congregational meeting and vote on the shelter property transfer for the adult forum on Sunday, October 29. Interim Pastor Ben Masters August 2022Our story begins in 2021, during the hottest summer on record for the Twin Cities, with a turning point in the longstanding conversation between this congregation and our campus partner, Our Saviour’s Community Services (OSCS).
In July, leaders from both organizations signed a memorandum of understanding for working together to develop a long-range vision for the 2300 block of Chicago Ave. Our story continues in the deep freeze of January, when new leaders took up the charge to discern such a vision. And in June 2022, they invited you to help write a new chapter. On June 19, OSLC hosted a forum about the work of the long-range property visioning team. Most of forum’s content is summarized in this booklet: https://tiny.cc/OSCS-OSLC (paper copies are available in the church office). You can watch the recording of the forum on our YouTube channel, but first let me share with you this community’s dreams. We have so many dreams! Across six tables, participants kept reaching for post-it notes to jot down another idea. Here are the highlights that people shared: Deeply affordable housing. Apartment buildings. Multigenerational housing. A village of tiny homes. We want to help Our Saviour’s Housing reach the next level. Green building. Solar panels. Geothermal heat. Climate-informed design. We are committed to putting creation care into practice. Make reparations real. Collaborate with a land trust. Empower BIPOC home ownership. Close the racial wealth gap. We can help build equity in the financial and society sense. More space for more ministry. What if we made space for a pre-school, a resource hub, a coffee shop that employs people in supportive housing? How about a playground, more green space, and a place to gather outdoors? Can we imagine classrooms with windows for ELC students? And, always, we need more parking! Threading through our dreaming is a desire for acting with community support. As one note read: Less ‘for.’ More ‘with.’ The property visioning team looks forward to connecting with the community stakeholders you suggested. Next month, team members will attend a series on community engagement from Nexus Community Partners. When snow covers the sleeping soil, the team will craft a plan for building a vision with you, OSCS stakeholders, and our neighbors in Phillips. You can expect to hear updates on this work in the fall. Today, tomorrow, and into the future, commend the property visioning team and all our community dreaming into God’s holy keeping. Onward in the Spirit! April 2022Before Pr. Laurie retired, she and interim Executive Director David Fey wrote an MOU about the need for OSLC and OSCS to do some joint visioning for our shared campus. This document was signed by the OSCS board chair and our president, Elaine Johnson. The MOU particularly highlights that the houses along Elliot Avenue (including the Winona House) are in need of serious renovations, and they encouraged us to make a plan for the future of those properties. It states:
“We also recognize that some of the properties on the campus – the houses, in particular – are aging and deteriorating in ways that will require substantial renovation, at significant cost, in the near future. Before committing to costly renovations, it is prudent to consider whether the preservation of these structures is in the best interests of the community, and the best use of our human and financial resources, as organizations entrusted with their stewardship.” When Mike Huffman came on as the OSCS Executive Director, he and Pr. Martha, with the blessing of council and the OSCS board, decided to take the first step of setting up a group to begin carrying some of this work forward. We have an OSCS/OSLC joint property visioning team that has met a handful of times since the beginning of the year. Nate Blumenshine, Rico Morales, Pr. Ben, Pr. Martha, Mike Huffman, and LaQuadra Neal who directs OSH are currently part of this team, with assistance as well from Jim Johnson. So far, the team has:
|
This is a blog with property development updates.ArchivesCategories |