We then asked ourselves whether to develop part of the lot or to go whole hog for an integrated development. After much soul searching, the Building Committee decided to give it our best shot and develop fully to cater for all our immediate and future needs. Hence our new church will consist of three buildings: the main church building with choir loft and total seating capacity of more than 1,400 persons, and the 3-storey Pastoral Centre housing the cafeteria, bookshop, meeting rooms, and AV-rooms. The 2-storey Presbytery is tucked in between the church and Pastoral Centre. This will house the offices and residence for the Priests and an adoration room.

Soil investigations showed that good soil is only found some 40m deep despite the church is sitting on a "highland." Piling cost would be prohibitive. The structural engineers came up with a floating cellular raft design. We took the opportunity to place the car park into this semi-basement at no additional cost. Recent URA regulations prohibit columbaria to adopt an open design aboveground. The option was to build a windowless columbarium building above-ground or to site it in the basement. We decided to place it directly under the church

Besides the main church development, the Building Committee also had to make two other considerations. One is to develop the school hall into a temporary church which is now named the IHM Chapel. This chapel will remain for IHM use after the main church is completed. The other development we had to make is the Parish Hall at 46 Kovan Road. Both this house and the present church are so old and deteriorated that it has been rather difficult to maintain it, upgrade it, nor refurbish it sufficiently. Wood rot, leaking roofs, rusted posts, spalling concrete, mildew and constant power tripping has been bugging our past Parish Priest and Fr James Yeo. Hence we are presently constructing a 3-storey house for our parish use in due course.

Our estimated construction costs are $1 million for the Parish House at Kovan Road, $300,000 for the IHM Chapel, and $10 million for the main church. Our proposals to the Archdiocesan Finance Commission were all approved. A Fund Raising Committee was formed to look into fund raising efforts.

by Christian Kwan