Construction work is progressing at Faith Presbyterian Church on Coronado Parkway as the facility’s expansion project moves closer to completion.

Though the official groundbreaking took place in January, the life of the project really started in 2003 when plans were first drawn up.

According to Steve Riggs, finance moderator for the expansion, the church’s plans had to meet several city building codes before it could move forward.

“We really started working on this June 2003,” Riggs said. “It went through quite a few years of design and preparation. We had to secure a lot of additional land around our campus area, and put together a site plan that was conducive to parking and water distribution.”

Now the church is working on the first of a two-phase project, which includes site work, a fellowship hall, a Christian life center and a special “sports floor” for children.

Riggs said the church’s vision for the new sports floor is to make it available to all youth in Cape Coral, not only members of the congregation. He said it could become a “pseudo YMCA.”

“It’ll have the capability of serving not only the church youth, but also have a multipurpose usage for the community itself,” Riggs said. “It’ll be a place for kids to come.”

Phase one is expected to be compete in March 2009. The second phase — a new sanctuary scheduled to begin shortly after phase one is finished — will take about year to reach its conclusion.

All in all, the future looks bright for the Cape institution, which will increase its seating capacity from 600 to 1,200 when the new sanctuary is complete.

For now, workers were toiling away Monday morning, pushing ahead on the life center and fellowship hall, which will have a kitchen that will be able to feed up to 350 people at a time.

The fellowship hall will also be available for meetings, if companies want to rent out some of the 17,000 square feet for events or special occasions.

Riggs said it is all part of the master plan, which affords the church the opportunity to do more community outreach in the future. Part of the outreach plan is already in action with a day care facility, one of, if not the only, gold standard day cares in Southwest Florida.

A big part of the project, too, has been word of mouth within the congregation. As excitement builds and snowbirds return from up north, Riggs said they have been surprised to see the project progressing so quickly.

A big part of that word of mouth, according to Riggs, has been the age of the congregation itself, which has gotten younger and younger over the years.

“We’re seeing our membership congregation age going down. We’re getting younger.” He said.

For more information on the expansion, and to see weekly photos of the project’s progression, visit: faithcapecoral.org.