Welcome Back to UCE Capital Improvements – Lobby: September 3, 2021

When returning to our beloved church building in September and beyond, you will notice some differences in the lobby and wing spaces thanks to funding from the 2019 Capital Campaign and the hard work and dedication of the Capital Campaign Implementation Committee and UCE volunteers and staff.  We wanted to highlight some of these exciting changes and talk a bit about how we made decisions about what updates to make. This is the first of three articles.

Our lobby planning involved a broad, human-centered design approach–a process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs.  To do this, we gathered input from the groups that use the UCE lobby space, (hospitality team, membership relations, family ministry, accessibility team, and staff), as well as rentals, safety and security. We then analyzed and synthesized these inputs, and categorized them to create our organizing focus areas: furnishings, layout, technology, information, and signage.  During this process we saw that some of the biggest areas of need were related to welcoming newcomers and families.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be sharing with you various aspects of the lobby and wing projects so you’ll understand the thought process for each improvement area.

Welcoming Families

The first updates to the lobby space we wanted to highlight are related to welcoming families – and especially those with younger children.  As Rev. Wiviott has mentioned in many of her recent messages to the congregation, we are working as a congregation toward being a truly multi-generational community. As part of this work we have taken special care to understand the needs of families – both current and new – and worked on ways to make our lobby space as welcoming and functional as possible for them.  Here some things you will see:

  • New kid-height coat hooks.  We learned through our research that for families with younger children, the current coat area was a source of stress.  (Most young children are not able use hangers easily, and older kids couldn’t reach most of the hangers that were available.)  We further considered both accessibility (locating the hooks far from the ramp) and safety (locating them away from the top of the stairs; choosing kid-safe hooks), and inclusion (our only kid-height hooks previously were in the basement, and were seldom used because they were not convenient).

  • New kid-friendly corner in the lobby.  We noted in our research that no kid-sized furniture existed anywhere on the main floor of our church.  Now there is a designated spot in the lobby with a kid-sized table and chairs, surrounded by seating for parents/adults.  This spot was the best choice due to safety concerns (it is far from the automatic doors!).

Soon you’ll be hearing about our multi-generational outdoor space. It is coming along nicely as well and we can’t wait to welcome everyone to it soon.  This is just a taste of what we have been up to – we are eager to provide you with more updates next week!

2021-09-02T17:16:58+00:00

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