New Use for a 19th Century School

April 2007 Business Alabama

By Heather Strong

Blessed is the parish of St. Paul's Cathedral for its staff has much to celebrate: A new construction award-winning family life center, complete with a courtyard, two balconies and a four-story bell tower containing a set of eight change bells that is unique to Alabama.

Founded in 1872, the present church, located in downtown Birmingham, was built in 1890. A school and rectory were built between 1920 and 1930, and the school's doors remained open until 2001. The school enrolled up to 230 students in the 1960s, says Father Richard Donohoe.

"The mandate wasn't being fulfilled," Donohoe, who has served as parish priest for six years says. "By the time the school closed, there were less than 130 students. The needs of the parish changed. Parents moved out of the city and into the suburbs."

After three years, the school was renovated and became the Cathedral Life Center. Construction was completed in November 2006.

Donohoe says the parish raised more than $4 million by giving pledges to the church during its Preserve-Prepare-Proclaim capital campaign.

Ryan Ferris of Golden and Associates in Birmingham was construction project manager. "The original budget was $4.3 million, and was revised to include $30,000 more in additional work," he says. "Golden and Associates also provided $95,000 in options to reduce the cost of the project."

"Like any renovation project, you find unforeseen existing conditions that make the project challenging," Ferris says. "The church, the architects at Architecture Works in Birmingham and Golden and Associates all worked together to find the most economical solutions to address these challenges."

Ferris says that when there is an existing building built in 1920-ish with that infrastructure and the methods used during that era - for example, the plumbing, the HVAC and the electrical system are the same since it was built - then there are challenges to replacing, adding on or updating.

"You also add in the challenges to getting the systems to meet today's building code,"he says.

"For example, we replaced the plumbing system inside the building and when we went to tie it in to the existing sanitary sewer line, we found that the line that was buried in the ground was clay terra cotta pipe from 1920. It was in poor shape. So, that being the case, it had to be replaced to meet present city code," Ferris says.

He says no one had contemplated that previous cost when the budget was set, so everyone worked to overcome those circumstances.

The new family life center houses catechetical and social outreach programs.

Provisions were made for handicap accessibility, including the installation of an elevator. A kitchen with a stove, refrigerators and sinks was built, along with a dining area.

"The auditorium is beautiful," Ferris says. "It has cream-colored plaster walls with quarter-sawn oak hardwood floors by Classic Flooring in Birmingham."

The center has three stories with an exterior balcony on the second floor. Ten-foot-tall heavy, florid mahogany doors with five-foot-tall transom windows open from the two-story auditorium to the balcony, which overlooks the courtyard. The outside balcony has a copper roof. Matching mahogany doors also open onto the courtyard itself.

There also is a balcony on the third floor of the center that overlooks the auditorium. The courtyard was built by transforming a 21,000-foot concrete parking areas with landscaping and irrigation.

Annuals, like poppies, snapdragons and pansies, are currently planted in the courtyard. Donohoe says walkways are constructed from concrete pavers and olive trees will be planted at some time.

Ferris says the project faced many challenges. "We had to take extra care to match the finishes on the floors, ceilings and exterior facades with new finishes," Ferris says.

Another challenge was how the size of the project affected the schedule of material deliveries. The total property size is 80,000 square feet, and there are four buildings that share the same parking area. With a new brick and limestone bell tower being added and an asphalt parking are being transformed, there wasn't room for the storage of building materials. Deliveries had to be phased so materials could be used as soon as they reached the site. Accurate scheduling of deliveries was critical to the project's success, and additional consideration had to be given to the flow of traffic on 22nd Street North between Third and Fourth Avenues. Deliveries had to be scheduled around rush hour due to heavy traffic during those times on those streets.

A third challenge included the installation of new storm windows on the inside of the existing windows. The onsite team had to measure each of the 100 window prior to ordering the storm windows because none of the windows were the same size and most were not exactly square.

The Cathedral Life Center features a state-of-the-art energy management system. The lights were put on a dimming system with motion sensors, and there are programmable thermostats and a master control panel for the HVAC system. The panel can control the entire HVAC system, as well as program each room's thermostat.

The data/phone wiring throughout the building also was installed and updated, giving classrooms and meeting rooms access to the latest technology. Golden and Associates also installed new electrical wiring, plumbing, and fire protection systems.

There is a programmable feature to the bells. They can be rung by hand or electronically. The control panel is located in the cathedral's choir loft, located in another building.

The eight change bells, housed in a new 68-foot limestone and brick bell tower with a slate roof, were cast and imported from White Chapel, England. The bells were made by White Chapel Bell Foundry, which was established as a business in the 13th century. The foundry is well-known for casting the Liberty Bell and the Great Bell of Westminster, commonly known as Big Ben.

Due to the uniqueness of the bells, foundry employee Neil Thomas flew from England and was onsite to oversee the installation for two weeks. After the bells were installed, Thomas tuned them.

"Eight change bells are specific bells rung in a certain numerical sequence by hand," Donohoe says. "They're used to celebrate Mass and other significant events, as well as mourn death."

Golden and Associates kept what it could in the center. Harwood floors in the classrooms were refinished, as were the building's original window frames. The glass panels in the windows were re-glazed and re-caulked. The building's façade was cleaned and sealed to bring out the beauty.

Golden and Associates won two construction awards for building the Cathedral Life Center. The company won the Associate Builders and Contractors of Alabama's Excellence in Construction Award under the Historical Renovation category in 2006. This year, Golden and Associates won the Build Alabama Award 2007 from the Association of General Contractors of Alabama.

Donohoe says the people of the parish are very happy with the renovation. "I think the Cathedral Life Center is a symbol of the renewal of the Cathedral parish. Its use for education, social and community-building helps the Cathedral parish manifest its goals for today and the future," Donohoe says.

Golden and Associates said the project is special to the firm because it was the transformation of a building that touches the lives of so many people in Alabama.