Parbawatiya Center Expansion Project |
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Phase One Photo-Newsletter We are delighted to announce that we have now completed Phase One of the Parbawatiya Center Expansion Project -- we have built a very beautiful and spacious meditation room on our second lot. See below for pictures and press articles that appeared about this first-ever green building in Safety Harbor! We have now started Phase Two -- completely renovating the existing building to make space for a new sitting room, bookstore, office, bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kids' meditation class area. We will also be improving our patio/porch area so we can offer a friendly cafe experience. We are doing this under the supervision of our General Construction Manager, YoungJin, with her wonderful team of Malcolm, Jody, Glen, Mark, Alex and others. Work should be finished by the end of March. Photos of the demolition and redevelopment will appear here shortly. We have also already started upgrading our yard, putting down grass and planting flowers and trees. We are still looking for help in creating a few small but lovely landscaped areas for people to enjoy socializing or reading and meditating in peace outside. For a long time now, we have had very well qualified teachers and study programs at Parbawatiya Center, but there has not been much room for all our activities; so we are very happy about these much-needed developments. We have already completed a month-long retreat in the new meditation room (in January) and are holding all our regular classes there. This expansion means that we greatly value your financial help, both since we are still on a fund-raising drive to raise funds to pay for the new building and because our monthly mortgage repayments will now be doubling. Please consider contributing to our building fund if you have not already done so and/or becoming a Center Sponsor to support this beautiful project. Your kind contributions are what enable us to bring Buddhism and meditation to all those who want it throughout the Bay Area. 1) Phase 2 Construction Images View complete album or scroll down for highlights.
View complete album or scroll down for highlights.
Even their new building will be enlightened Next month, Platinum Advanced Technologies will complete a green construction project of a Buddhist meditation center in Safety Harbor. Don Thompson, vice president of Platinum, offered the firm's enviro-friendly construction panels to build the 34- by 28-foot building for the Parbawatiya Buddhist Center at Sixth Avenue S and Second Street. Construction manager for the 11-year-old center, YoungJin No, a general contractor and head of Green Field Development, said the steel, polyurethane and fiberglass panels are stronger, significantly more energy-efficient and allow for faster construction. What do a Buddhist monk, a volunteer developer with a penchant for meditation and a tree-hugging contractor from Seattle have in common? They are building the first-ever green structure in Safety Harbor, and it just happens to be a Buddhist Meditation Center. Most residents here freely admit there’s nothing ordinary about Safety Harbor. It is a charming community — an enclave — that seems to somehow defy the faster pace of life elsewhere in Pinellas County. But for two days in mid-November, the mood at the corner of 6th Avenue South and 2nd Street South was anything but laid back. A three-man framing crew erected all of the exterior walls of the 34- ft. x 28-ft. meditation hall in a fraction of the time they would have spent laying concrete block. And with another day’s effort, the building was dried in. In five more weeks — before the end of December — the construction manager said the project would be completed. |
