Pray for Parking, A Parking Lot Update

For most of the history of Coggins Memorial Baptist Church parking has been a problem. Coggins Memorial has served this community for over fifty years. For all of these years, members and guests have parked along the street, across the street, around an adjacent building, and in our current small parking areas. Two years ago our congregation, after saving enough money, voted to solve this problem by removing two houses on our property and installing a parking lot. Though the lot would be small, approximately forty spaces, we were ecstatic about it. Our congregation was abuzz with discussion and couldn’t wait to get started.

In our discussions, we wanted to make sure we went about the process respectfully by following all the codes and getting all the permits necessary and so we did. The process started by getting an engineer’s drawings and approvals to demolish the houses. The estimate for the demotion of the structures was $16,000.00. We budgeted $24,000.00 knowing that construction always costs more than initially expected. We were told that as soon as the permits for demolition were issued we could get started. Then the roller coaster ride began. First, we had to remove asbestos from the two houses. Then we were told that we had to have a stormwater drainage pit installed. After much discussion, two more drawings and two more pit models, we’ve paid the city of Lexington, engineers, and a demolition crew around $58,000.00 and all we have is a field of mud and zero new parking. We still have to pay to have the lot excavated, gravel poured, the runoff pit installed and the lot paved and striped. Let me say that again, we’ve paid said organizations $58,000.00 and we have not added a single parking space to our property. To make matters worse now that we finally have permission from the powers that be, the paving company with whom we’ve been communicating is no longer returning our calls. It’s hard to understand why forty parking spaces would cost a non-profit church so much or would be so much trouble in a small town. I’ll let you make your mind up about that. 

Anger nor revenge is my motive for sharing this with you. I am writing this to inform all of you who love and support Coggins about what our congregation has been dealing with. Please pray with us that these issues will be resolved soon and that the hard-earned money of our members will be able to go to gospel work and not to pits and permits and drawings. We know there are good people in Lexington who have been working on our behalf along the way and we give thanks to them and for them. Would you pray with us that we might have more help and cooperation with our little parking lot? Pray that God will replace the $58,000.00 that has gone out which was set aside for this project. That amount of money is not easily raised by a congregation but we serve the God that owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Thank you for being our prayer partners and we hope each of you will join us each Sunday in worship.

Love you all in Christ,