Five years ago, sixty people gathered on a typical Sunday. Today, more than one hundred and sixty do. Our church was built for one congregation, and that congregation kept growing into something different. Now we must make sure our building can meet that new growth.

We will build a new narthex — a welcome center for everyone who crosses our threshold, with a coffee bar and room to linger. The new front porch of a growing church.

We will expand our seating — from roughly 190 to 240, so growth is no longer limited by the walls.

We will redesign our altar area with accessibility in mind — because God’s table has never had a barrier and neither should ours.

We will bring our choir down from the loft and onto the floor — because music belongs to the whole congregation.

We will update our chapel — so that our children have a space worthy of the faith we are forming in them.

We will upgrade our audio and video systems — so the worship of this community is heard and seen clearly by everyone in the room.

In 1999 St. Martin-in-the-Fields received approval of its revised master plan. As illustrated on the second page of the attached presentation, the plan called for the construction of a new church, an education building and a significant amount of new parking, roadways, and other improvements.

While our objective remains unchanged to provide capacity to accommodate about 75 additional worshipers in our church, up from today’s capacity of approximately 171, priorities have changed. We believe it is important to maintain the current amount of open, recreational space to the south of today’s parking lot. We believe the church’s façade ought to be updated to better align with the architectural standards of the neighborhood. We believe it is important to generally maintain and not expand the developed footprint of our existing buildings and adjacent improvements.

The attached information package of drawings was presented to the public and select members of the Southlake City Council on the evenings of November 8th and 9th . We are now sharing the same presentation papers with you. Note on the third page of the presentation the darker colored orange around the lighter colored orange building that is the present church building. The darker orange area represents the extent of planned exterior construction. A new church tower is proposed to be built at the west end of the current building, connected to the Parish Hall by a covered walkway. The Parish Hall itself will be connected to the current church building and its main administrative entrance will be relocated. The construction of a church tower is part of the current approved master plan. The proposed tower is consistent with those previous designs, although in a different location. The next set of drawing in our presentation package illustrate how the exterior of the building will change. The last page outlines possible interior modifications.

No additional design and engineering work is possible until a revised master plan is approved by the City of Southlake. During the Corridor Committee Meeting on November 9th , we were asked to share our presentation with a wider audience and allow people to response to us with any questions or comments.We have therefore posted this memorandum of introduction and its attachment on the church website and have hand delivered copies of it to our six neighbors to the north of our property. We welcome your input and ask that you email us at stmartininthefields@stmartininthefields.org or drop your comments off at the church Monday through Friday between 9 AM and 1 PM.