When we first realized the need for a building I went to work on a floor plan while John Glenn and others started working on the finances. A close friend and longtime associate of George’s, Frank Cunningham, a Florida PE, who had been working with me since the late seventies, offered his services at no charge. Frank and I had also worked together on the design, fabrication and construction of the pavilion where the Sunday service had always been held. Frank was well qualified to design a steel building as he has “many under his belt” and everyone agreed that was what we needed. Frank, with my help, would handle the project at cost of material and the ranch would only need to hire construction workers for the build. This was after the hurricanes of 2004 that left thousands of damaged and destroyed homes and buildings in its wake. You will remember the blue FEMA tarps scattered from south Miami to Orlando covering bare roofs with missing shingles. SST Custom Fabricators, owned by Dorothy Sweatt, had up until this time provided all design, fabrication, and construction of nearly everything on the ranch much of which Frank was closely involved in. Not only would a steel building be less expensive but it could be designed for higher wind loading than necessary for Okeechobee County and would have been up one time and on budget. John Hales, an associate of John Glenn since the early nineties, offered to donate to the build if he and the late Danny Chreech could build it the way they wanted. Danny was not a licensed contractor and had experienced trouble building with steel so wanted no part of steel construction. He was strictly a “brick and mortar” man, as it were. For reasons “still unclear”, John Glenn decided to go with the higher cost and less structurally sound CBS building. George and Dorothy had, from the beginning of our relationship with the Glenn’s, always left any final decisions to John Glenn and so it was to be a CBS building. I said two things pertaining to the building - it must have a metal roof to which all agreed and it didn’t really matter from what material the building was constructed as it was what went on inside that counted. I never had a moment’s disappointment about the project.
Disappointed