By Jason Evans
Staff Reporter
jevans@thepccourier.com

CENTRAL — Construction of a $2 million addition to the grounds of Cannon Church on Pepper Street in Central is now underway.

Church leaders broke ground on the project on the first day of 2026, lead pastor Carl Poole said Monday.

“We’re excited about it,” Poole said. “There’s a lot of excitement in the air.”

The 4,900-square-foot addition will include a social hall, dining hall and welcome center with a commercial kitchen and restrooms, he said. The church is working with Trehel Corporation.

“We’ve grown over the last four years to need more space for our congregation,” Poole said.

Expected to be complete in September of this year, the addition will be used not only for churchwide meals, but “also for our children’s ministry and youth ministry during the week,” he said.

“Wednesday night is our big ministry night, where we have a whole bunch of kids and teenagers,” Poole said. “We just outgrew our current facility that we were using for them.”

The church has been exploring the idea of an expansion for about three years, “from the initial kind of discussion to where we are today,” he said.

Work going on across the street is also church-related.

“Across the street, we’re currently grading for 101 parking spaces,” Poole said. “Where this building is going up, it’s going to take up our current parking lot. There’s going to be an enclosed connector from the main building to the new building, which will really be nice.”

The addition will allow one of Cannon’s programs to return home.

“Our youth, our teenagers, they have been meeting off-campus for five years,” Poole said. “So this will allow us to bring them back to campus.

“We’re a multi-generational church,” he continued. “We have lots of different ages. We have a good mix of young adults and older adults.”

Cannon is a community-oriented church, Poole said.

“We’re try to do a lot of outreach, like back-to-school events where we give out backpacks and school supplies,” he said.

The church, located at 120 Pepper Street, “has been around for a long time,” Poole said.

Cannon Mill donated the land for the current church building year ago.

“That’s where we got our name,” Poole said.

Learn more at cannon.church.