By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Nearly five years after the LDS Logandale Chapel was destroyed by fire, construction is expected to begin in the next few days on a new facility to replace it. A notice to proceed with construction has been issued and pre-construction meetings with the contractor took place last week, according to local church officials.
The plans of the new building have remained largely unchanged throughout the five year planning and approval process, according to LDS Logandale Stake Physical Facilities Representative Keith Kennard. The general footprint of the 19,400 square foot building has stayed the same throughout the process, he said. So has the basic floorplan and design.
But there have been a few small changes made throughout the process.
First, the building will be constructed just slightly to the north of where the original Logandale Chapel stood. In 2011 the Church was able to acquire a piece of property just north of the site. This property, which had been previously unavailable to the church to purchase, offered a way to create better access to the parking lot of the new building from the highway. So Church leaders decided to hold off on construction and incorporate the property into the design. This effectively reset the approval process and ended up adding two and a half more years to the project. But the current plans have maximized the use of that additional land.
Another change to the original design is that the current plans don’t include solar panels on the roof of the structure. In the earlier versions, the local chapel was included in a series of five new protype meetinghouse buildings which were to be designed to meet requirements of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. This included solar panels on the ceilings. Most of those five buildings have already gone through construction before this time.
But Kennard said that the Church had found that there were some economic particulars specific to the local area that made it less attractive to install the solar panels.
Another noticeable change in the plans will deal with the facade of the building. Kennard explained that the original plans called for an all-brick facade.
“There were concerns because this particular building design has parapet walls meaning no visible roof, so it would just be brick walls going up,” Kennard said. “There was a feeling that there should be some other material to kind of break that up.”
So local stake leaders decided to use part stone work and part bricks on the exterior walls. Stone work will be built from the ground to about four feet up, then brick would continue from there for the upper part of the walls, Kennard said.
Stake leaders are happy to finally see construction commence at the site. For the past five years, local LDS congregations have had to keep tight schedules in the remaining area chapels to accommodate all of the membership. Many members on the northern end of Logandale have had to travel to the Moapa Chapel on Sundays for meetings. That includes the home-ward congregation of Stake President Matt Messer.
“We are just glad to see things finally getting started on the site,” Messer said. “We look forward to having a beautiful building there again for our membership and the community to enjoy.”
