Construction of The Connelly House, located directly behind St. John the Evangelist, is now 85% complete!  The project, which is scheduled to wrap up this Fall, is a joint venture between Project H.O.M.E. and Bethesda Project.  It will provide 79 units of affordable housing to former homeless men and women.  St. John the Evangelist's new Parish Center will be on part of the first floor of the new, LEED-certified ("green") building.

Project H.O.M.E.'s Residential and Commercial Project Manager, Don Billingsley, reports that there was a "middle of the night" transfer from temporary power to permanent power just last week.  The "middle of the night" transfer was a precautionary measure designed to limit the impact of a potential power outage on our Center City neighbors if something went wrong with the transfer.  Luckily, there was no outage and the transfer was successful.

If you've been following the construction, you may have noticed a large hole in the building on each floor.  This hole has been housing the temporary elevator.  Now that the building has been switched over to permanent power, the temporary elevator can be removed and the exterior wall closed.

In spite of such great progress, the project did suffer an unfortunate setback the weekend of July 4th.  Thieves broke into the project sight and stole a significant amount of tools from multiple contractors.  The crime is being investigated and Mr. Billingsley requests that any parishioners who may have seen anything suspicious contact the police.