Show Us the Light!

The Gatherings has seen use of our facility more than double over the past year with  1 -- 5 activities every day, including potlucks, yoga, cub scouts, girl scouts, open mics, board game nights, movies and so much more.  A new insulated ceiling with improved lighting in the main room will make the whole building more usable for a greater number of groups.

There are 4 rooms that groups can use at The Gatherings, so sometimes two or three activities will be happening at the same time. The big open rooms in the front half of the 1st and 2nd floors are the most commonly used but are in need of some functionality and energy efficiency work. The current lights in the main room on the ground floor are left over from when the building was a framing/art shop. The lights are like spotlights that focus on small areas and leave many dark areas, and are not easily adjustable to see by. At board games we have to set up tables immediately below the lights, or we are in our own shadows. At yoga, they are too bright to look up towards, but turning them off makes the room too dark in winter. Doing anything that involves having to see things closely, e.g. games, working on art and crafts, etc, are inhibited by the poor lighting. Our proposed solution is to replace the current lighting with recessed dimmable LED lights that will be spread evenly throughout the room and also made dimmable so that the lighting can be customized to perfectly suit any group's needs. The LED lighting will be much more energy efficient than the current lights, benefiting The Gatherings' bottom line, as well as the environment.

The estimated cost for the new lighting is $3,000, and  Versant has made a grant to cover that cost.

The new lights will be installed as part of another renovation to insulate the ceiling of that front, main room. The ceiling in the main room is just the 1" thick pine floor of the room above. Footsteps in the second floor room are loud in the ground floor room, and regular speaking volume can be heard easily between both rooms. The scouts leader said that about 5 times a meeting she has to go up there and ask the kids to be quiet in order for the kids downstairs to hear her. When doing yoga upstairs, voices could even be heard from the back side of the building. Reducing the sound travel between the main room and the room above would allow for much more pleasant use of the whole building by large groups or even separate groups that could meet simultaneously (which will be happening more this year as the calendar has filled up so much). There is interest in using the Gatherings as a co-working space that's damped due to concern about it being too loud for working upstairs when others are downstairs in the building, or vice versa. We propose adding a new ceiling to the main room with insulation for sound reduction and, of course, keeping more heat from our heat pump downstairs, again to save both money and the planet.

Miraculously, one of our board members has found both an electrician and a carpenter who are supporters of The Gatherings and are available to start on this project in mid-April. In addition to the above cost for the lighting, the insulation and new ceiling are expected to cost $6,000 or $7,000 depending on the materials used. 

This initiative will double The Gatherings ability to provide space to the growing number of families, community groups and others seeking to use rooms at The Gatherings. It will also save us money on lighting and heating so that we can instead spend those funds on additional programming. Please donate what you can to this project to allow The Gatherings to better fulfill our mission of fostering community through sharing, cooperation, learning spirituality and the arts.