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The proposed church will still be big, two and a half times bigger than the present church, or 85,000 square feet compared to the present 34,000 square feet. Still, that is smaller than the 95,000 square feet proposed four years ago.
While interior plans are not final, they include approximately 15 offices, a dozen or so classrooms and nursery-school rooms, an all-purpose community room, a small chapel and the sanctuary where services will be held.
The sanctuary will be in the 9 to 11,000 square foot range and seat 950 people, compared to the 550 people who fit in the present sanctuary. Seating for 1,300 was proposed in 2005.
The sanctuary will be amphitheatre style to allow those in the last row to be closer to the speaker than would otherwise be possible.
Craig Samuelson, who is in charge of the Lighthouse Committee, as the building committee for the church is called, said that church members listened to the main objections of neighbors after the previous proposal was rejected by the Inland Wetlands Commission and the church has tried to address these concerns.
The commission said the proposed building was too close to a vernal pool on a hillside north side of the property and neighbors said the building was too close to the road. As a result the new plans have the building on the same footprint as the present building, which is set back from the road. However, the footprint will be almost twice as large at 56,000 square feet, compared to the present 33,000 square feet. The extra footage will extend into the hillside behind the present church, rather than coming closer to the street. All of the land immediately behind the church is owned by it.
The height of the building will actually be less than the present height of about 52 to 56 feet, not counting the steeple. A forty-foot height is being proposed, and the front of the building will look like one story, so the facade will not be as imposing as it might otherwise be.
The number of parking spaces will be expanded from 330 to 485 and a porous type of paver that will allow the ground to absorb more water will replace the present asphalt. Right now, all the run-off from surrounding neighbors, as well as from the church property goes into Cricker Brook and then into Samp Mortar Lake, according to Samuelson. He thinks that three-quarters of the pollutants that are currently generated by church and neighbors will be cleaned by new technology.
More trees will be planted in the parking lot and small "New England style" lantern lights with timers are proposed to minimize light pollution. That had also been a concern of neighbors, Samuelson admitted. There will also be a berm with plantings along Black Rock Turnpike to hide the parking lot from the street.
Samuelson said that there are no plans to allow an entrance or exit onto Lakewood Road to the north or Lindamir Lane to the south.
To alleviate traffic, the church will use some of its own property to create a new dedicated right-turn lane from Black Rock Turnpike.
Samuelson said the church has no future plans of building on the site beyond what it is presently proposing. He said that future expansion of the church will be by satellite location. The church presently has another church in Stamford called Black Rock of Long Ridge. The pastor in Fairfield makes a DVD of his Saturday night sermon and it is played at the Sunday morning services in Stamford.
The Fairfield church currently has three Sunday morning services, and a Sunday night service geared toward college kids, along with the Saturday evening service.
"With five services, we're wearing our staff out," said Samuelson, adding that having a larger sanctuary would allow the church to have fewer services. He said that as many as 2,000 people attend church each weekend.
"We have so many different ministries," he noted, mentioning the Divorce Recovery Workshop, and the Black Rock Employment Network Group, called BRENG.
Samuelson said that the church has held meetings with the neighbors about its building plans and that the biggest concern was traffic, "which we're trying to address."
Alexis Harrison, RTM member for District 2, where the church is located, told the Minuteman that she was at a meeting for neighbors in January and, "We had a lot of questions, but overall, it looked like they had given the neighbors' concerns a lot of consideration."
Later, in an email, Harrison added that she hadn't talked to any of the residents in the vicinity of the church in recent months, "but I hope this plan is amenable and we'll of course watch the approval process as it takes place."
The church has chosen George Wiles of Bridgeport as the architect. He designed the remodeling of Penfield Pavilion and also the remodeling of Trumbull and Stamford High Schools, according to Samuelson. The Huntington Company has been chosen as site engineers. and Land-Tech Associates as the environmental engineers.
