Our Lady of Lourdes is expanding

An artist's rendering of the expanded Our Lady of Lourdes. Photo submitted.

By MARY ANN AZEVEDO
CHRONICLE CORRESPONDENT
Quyen Nguyen, who serves on the Catholic church's building committee, says the current sanctuary holds about 600 to 700 people.
The new sanctuary, to be completed in July 2010, will be able to hold about 1,200 people.
Located on 6550 Fairbanks North Houston Road, the church was founded in 1994.
Its congregation is mainly Vietnamese-American and includes more than 1,000 families.
Dallas-based Turner Construction's Houston office was tapped by the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to build the 18,000-square-foot church.
It will be located on a 20-acre property at Highway 290 and Fairbanks North Houston Road.
Jackson & Ryan Architects of Houston served as the project architect.
The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston is the largest Catholic Archdiocese in the state of Texas and the 11th largest in the United States.
The church exterior will consist of king-sized brick and a cast-iron trim, and will be topped off with three copper shingle spires at the entry towers, said Brandon Gaeke, manager of the special projects division for Turner's Houston office.
The interior finishes will include vaulted ceilings with acoustical soundproofing, glass-fiber reinforced gypsum columns, marble stone and stained red oak wood trim.
The existing sanctuary is going to be used as a day chapel.
John Clements, principal of Jackson & Ryan Architects, specializes in the design of churches and schools.
Our Lady of Lourdes officials, he said, wanted something that was imposing and traditional at the same time."
We ended up with a French Romanesque design with three towers, which is pretty unique," Clements said.
There's not many Catholic churches with three towers."
Although church officials wanted a Western-style church, they still wanted to include a piece of their heritage in the design.
In the back of the church, a rose window will have a map of Vietnam in the center of the window, said Nguyen.
Describing the new sanctuary as imposing, large and grandiose, Gaeke said there will be no question to visitors that the structure is a Catholic church.
Design work on the church is complete and it's about one-third of the way built.
Although the project wasn't a huge one for Turner in terms of revenuethe contract was worth $7.2 millionit was significant for the construction firm in that the church represented Turner's first religious facility in Texas, Gaeke said.
Because of that, it's got a lot of attention from everybody in this region from our company," Gaeke said.
It will also be a showpiece when it's finished."