Felder & Associates, chosen as the lead architect for the Corpus Christi Catholic Church project

An organization of Catholic church members in the Pooler area, the Pooler Catholic Community, has been raising money for more than two years to build a new facility.

Felder & Associates, chosen as the lead architect for the Corpus Christi Catholic Church project, have led the community to start construction on the new facility and have now broken ground to begin construction.

The Pooler group currently operate as a “worship site” in the Diocese of Savannah. Led by the Rev. Thomas J. Murphy, the community was founded on May 2, 2015, and the first mass was held in a rented space at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church. Murphy also serves as the pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Port Wentworth.

The new pastoral multipurpose building will be built on land purchased earlier by the Diocese of Savannah for a new west side parish campus.

“I knew from the very first Mass that our small community would make big things happen within the Catholic community in this town,” Murphy said. “We have all been working so hard to make this construction possible, and I really can’t believe that it’s finally about to happen.”

The $4.2 million project is expected to be complete by the fall of 2018. The new 17,000-square-foot pastoral multipurpose building will be used for worship, pastoral offices and religious education until a sanctuary is built at an unspecified time in the future.

“Projects like this one are always so exciting,” said Brian Felder, founder and managing principal of Felder & Associates. “We will be designing a structure that this group has worked so hard and waited so long to build.”