Our Needs

Phase II School Gymnasium 
& Community Recreation Space

The beautiful new school, built in our plan’s Phase I and thanks to the generosity and commitment of our members and community, is incomplete and limited in many ways without a gymnasium. Not having a school gym frustrates staff and students, and hinders enrollment. It also means we are missing opportunities for additional revenue, and more importantly, to open ourselves up wider to the Winona community and invite them into both our facilities and our church.

• Our staff struggles to provide students with a complete physical education program, especially during winter months and inclement weather. It also limits the children's team sports and recreational athletic opportunities.
• This limit also has negatively affected our school enrollment as more and more families prioritize athletics as they discern educational options for their children.
  As Winona grows, some infrastructure, particularly sports and recreation facilities, have struggled to keep up with the demand. The limited number of gyms in the city are often booked and overcrowded.
• Not having a gym leaves our students and church community outside the large, active, and fun athletic community. Team sports and recreation leagues can offer participants, especially children, a place to exercise, belong, and learn life-long teamwork skills.
  Additionally, providing a venue for practice, games, and tournaments can provide revenue and present us as an open, welcoming place to belong to all those who come there.

Large Gathering Space

St. Martin’s beautiful Sanctuary is a lovely, reverential place where so many come to worship and rejoice in their faith together. Beyond the worship space, though, the church building does not serve our needs to gather, socialize, work, and celebrate.

Gathering & Event Space

• Our basement fellowship hall is too small, crowded, cramped, and dark. Its unwelcoming atmosphere does not represent our church’s inviting community.
• The space’s low ceiling, posts, and layout makes it challenging to use for our wide variety of functions – funeral luncheons, receptions, school lunches, council meetings, and potlucks to name a few.
• It also does not have enough storage space for tables and chairs or any other meeting and activity materials.
• Having only this one space creates scheduling conflicts. All school meals are served and eaten in the fellowship hall, which limits when funeral luncheons and receptions can be held.
• Not only does the hall not meet our own ever-increasing need for a large gathering space, the whole Winona community is short on this size of venue. There are not enough event, wedding, and community gathering space, and the venues that do exist are in high demand.

Kitchen

Phase I of the school building project did not include a new school cafeteria and kitchen. Our current, basement, full-service kitchen serves both the church and school.

This kitchen was designed to serve the seating capacity of the fellowship hall, so its size, layout, and appliances are struggling to meet our larger, growing needs. As the school and church enrollment increases, our ability to make and serve meals from the current kitchen will be even more severely challenged. 

Church Campus Connections

Today our church and school have tight interpersonal connections between people. Our pastors, staff, volunteers, students, and families have warm, close, coordinated, and organized relationships. Our facilities, though, do not. Traveling between the church and school, and often, within each building, is disconnected and can be confusing for our own members and certainly visitors.  

Connecting Church & School

• Traveling outdoors between the church and school is inconvenient and affected by the weather. Mostly, though, it creates both a physical and an intangible separation between the two. The church is not a fully integrated part of the school and our students’ educational experience of worship.
• This disconnect also presents a safety issue. Students must leave the school and be escorted to the church for meals and Chapel. This creates potential gaps in safety and monitoring of unknown people coming and going on campus.
• Having to exit, travel outdoors, and enter multiple facilities is not welcoming to all, especially those with mobility issues, who want to participate in campus activities and events.

Finding Fellowship

An additional campus navigation problem is finding our Fellowship Hall. It is hard to locate from inside the building and outside, it can be difficult to find its entrance at the back of the church in the alleyway.

Additionally, the fellowship hall entrance lacks an ADA-compliant ramp which poses accessibility challenges for individuals with mobility issues. Their only access is through the church’s main entrance and down the elevator. This situation limits their independence and creates unnecessary obstacles for those who wish to participate in our community activities and events.