Why remodel a 1914 church building?

I've heard from a couple folks that it would be nice to hear more about why we are going to all this trouble to fix up the Abbey. Overall, the goal is to simply make the building more useful for the community whether that be for arts classes, yoga workshops, dinners, meetings, music lessons, etc. So I'm going to start writing about one or two pieces of the building here each week...

1. LEVELING THE UPPER HALL FLOOR
This will not only increase the useable square footage from 40x40 to 55x40, it will allow many more uses of the space including renting the space for benefit dinners. Nothing worse than your food sliding off your plate because of a sloped floor! It also allows the room to be used in any configuration so the audience could face any direction (and the portable staging we are currently fundraising for will make it even more versatile). The new floor (which will probably be a nice woodplank instead of the old asbestos tiles) also provides more soundproofing between levels and better access to the restrooms that will be ADA compliant.

2. ACCESSIBLE BATHROOMS
This one probably goes without saying, but the bathrooms were not quite workable for ADA compliance. So we are expanding them a little and reconfiguring so wheelchairs can turn around, not to mention get through the doors. Surprisingly, this isn't cheap when you get into moving drains and finding a plumber in Seattle right now is really tough!