UNF planning chapel on campus

Hannah Lee

President John Delaney revealed new plans to build a university chapel on campus in a recent interview with the UNF Spinnaker.

The chapel, also known as the student assembly center, would be built behind the Adam W. Herbert University Center, overlooking the pond that lies between Alumni Drive and Kernan Boulevard. The chapel is currently designed to be a one-story assembly hall that’s over 6,000 square feet and could be used for weddings, events and for students on a daily basis. It would have a connected support building that would have facilities like bathrooms, a kitchen, and storage spaces.

“I’ve thought that the campus needed a chapel. A place, an interfaith place, where the various faiths could you know, go and sneak off and pray during the day and have services on the weekends and do weddings and things like that,” said Delaney.

Junior english major Troy Capers welcomed the addition of a chapel.

“I think that an interfaith chapel would be an excellent investment for the university to make,” Capers said.  “There are so many different parts of life that happen for people who have their values and their religious belief systems and having a set space where people can use that, could be a huge draw.”

The plans as of this moment are still on the drawing board as funds still need to be gathered. But after almost 11 years of planning, Delaney hopes to break ground as soon as January 2018.

“We’ve had it designed and we are trying to find a way to break ground on it. We got three-quarters of the money, but not all of it, so we are trying to see if we can phase it in,” Delaney said.

According to the Annual Capital Outlay Budget, the chapel is projected to cost $9.2 million. The university has spent $552,129 in the current year and plans on spending $4 million next fiscal year with $4.6 million slated for the rest of the project.

Delaney said would like to get the project started before he retires, so the next university president could see it be built.

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