Tour of Addition to First Evangelical Free Church

First Evangelical Free Church of McKeesport is located on University Drive adjacent to the Penn State McKeesport campus. On April 24, 2003 Dan Zajdel and Dave Parkinson provided a tour of FEFC's church complex. The focus of the tour was the recent addition that included a multi-purpose room, a large dining room, kitchen, large meeting rooms, three offices, and restrooms. The addition is very similar to the Phase 4 addition shown in our plastic model, which shows a multi-purpose room with a two story addition beside it. The two story addition in the model has classrooms and a lounge.

The tour started in the multi-purpose room.

Some interesting facts about the multi-purpose room include:

It uses indirect lighting. The lights shine toward the ceiling and there are large windows surrounding the room to allow outside light into the facility.
The room doesn't have the look or feel of a gymnasium. It is used every Sunday morning for fellowship prior to morning services. The room is filled with tables and attendees share coffee and donuts. The youth use the facility on Wednesday night. On a typical Wednesday night about 500 teens are present and most are unchurched. Large banquets are also held in the multi-purpose room.
The room is heated by pipes under the floor. There is no air conditioning. A large fan is in the ceiling to ventilate the room.
The room has excellent acoustics. This is due to two factors: the ceiling is closed with tiles and the walls are made of blocks with slits filled with fiberglass. These blocks are shown in the adjacent photo. The closed ceiling only cost about $8,000.
The multi-purpose room is only used by groups within the church. It isn't rented to groups outside the church.

	The floor tiles are interlaced and can be individually replaced. They are called SportCoat and cost about $24,000. A hardwood floor would have cost about $100,000. The floor has"give" to it to avoid injuries. A similar (but not identical) floor has been installed at the new facility in Wilson Christian Academy.
A basketball court needs to have about 6,000 square feet of floor space and at least 22 foot high ceilings.
There is no locker room in the building. The thought was that the room is more of a fellowship hall than a gymnasium and a locker room was an unnecessary expense.
There are no bleachers. The room would have had to be much bigger to support bleachers and would have been much more costly.

Next stop on the tour was the kitchen:

Two doors from the multi-purpose room lead to the kitchen. It looks very much like the current kitchen at Norwin Alliance. It isn't big enough to accommodate large functions. Many dinners are therefore catered. The decision for a small kitchen was made during the building planning process. It was decided that catering was preferable to paying for a large kitchen facility.

Next the dining room was visited:

A door from the multi-purpose room leads to this small, elegant dining area. It is used for most funeral dinners and for small group dinners. It also serves as a large classroom and a teen meeting area. A dinner was in progress so we did not enter the room. The room had the feel of a nice restaurant dining area.

The final part of the tour included the second floor above the dining room. The upstairs area had three large pastor offices. These offices are large and also serve as Sunday School classrooms. There is also another large meeting room upstairs. Finally, there are rest rooms upstairs. There are no restrooms downstairs near the multi-purpose room or dining room.

After the tour of the addition, the rest of FEFC's facility was visited.

Mr. Zajdel and Mr. Parkinson did an excellent job describing the facility and answering questions during the tour. All members of the Building Committee and Advisory Group expressed their thanks to these two gentlemen.