North Coast Church’s upgrades at Olive Peirce Middle School and Ramona Community Park were the culmination of more than a year of planning, about $100,000 in contributions and donations, and hours of labor by volunteers.
The improvements at both locations were made through the church’s Serve Your City project held the weekend of May 3 and 4.
At Olive Peirce, the facelift included adding a sensory garden and mural, planting trees and refreshing landscaping in planters, and building two new block walls at the entrance for Olive Peirce signs.
At Ramona Community Park, more than 650 tons of dirt and infield mix were added to two ballfields, and a snack bar was renovated with windows, lighting, interior paint and exterior faux stone siding and shiplap siding to give it a farmhouse aesthetic.
Olive Peirce Principal Lindsay Benedetto said the 700-plus seventh- and eighth-grade students and staff loved the transformation.
“There’s lots of happy faces for sure,” Benedetto said on May 8 as she took a final “walk-through” inspection with North Coast leaders. “It’s lovely. My staff can’t stop smiling. Everyone is so appreciative that the community would come and have a serving heart to build a space where kids and adults want to come to.”
Ramona resident Dave Ross, a North Coast Church city manager who supervised both the school and park projects, said all church campuses conduct Serve Your City projects every two years. Campus locations include Ramona, Rancho Bernardo, Escondido, Fallbrook, San Marcos, Vista, Carlsbad, and in Mexico.
Church officials recently announced that they are moving forward with plans for a 20,330-square-foot campus on 9 acres formerly owned by Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church at state Route 67 and Highland Valley Road in Ramona.
“We do it because God puts it on our heart to serve,” said Ross, who has been a member of the church for the past decade. “We feel it’s important to serve our community. It takes time and talent to put effort into the community to make it a beautiful place. Hopefully, people will see that.”
Ross said about 100 volunteers worked throughout the weekend at Olive Peirce and another 70 volunteers provided labor and expertise at Ramona Community Park.
“About 90 percent of the volunteers were North Coast Church and 10 percent came from other churches or saw what we were doing and wanted to help,” he said.
Ross also kept track of the financial contributions for each project.
The church partnered with Ramona Community Park’s owner, the Ramona Municipal Water District. Ross said the water district paid for $17,500 of improvements for the snack shack demo and construction and sports fields resurfacing. The church paid more than $18,600 for mostly materials and supplies for the snack bar, walkways, backstops and benches.
Donations of labor, snack bar siding, equipment rentals, plumbing services, interior lighting, chain link fencing and base plates for the fields totaled $33,650. Altogether, Ross said park improvements cost nearly $70,000.
At Olive Peirce, Ramona Unified School District contributed $6,800 for paint and supplies, gopher wire and letters for the monument signs. North Coast Church paid $9,500 for lumber, arbors, benches, pergolas, garden fencing, monument signs and concrete, rocks, plants and paint supplies.
The donated portion of the school project was $11,700 for planter beds and plants, gravel, flagstone, large rocks, irrigation supplies and equipment rentals. The school’s total project cost was $28,000.
“With both projects, I’ve had the concept and vision in my mind for several months,” Ross said. “For the school, I had an architect donate their time to draw the plans. When I saw the finished projects at both places it was mind-blowing.”
Because the park project was delayed by rain and wet materials, Ross said it could take workers another two weeks to wrap it up. In the meantime, the crews will continue to work on improving the inside and outside of the snack bar, re-leveling the seating area, and adding the finishing work.
One of the finishing touches will be the installation of a 4-foot by 8-foot mural of a cartoonish bull pitching a ball to a cow at bat designed and created by Ramona artist Johnathan Martinez.
The inclement weather didn’t go unnoticed by Benedetto, who said she appreciated that the school volunteers persevered through the cold and rain.
“It was awfully chilly, but they were busting it out and it was phenomenal to see,” she said.
Benedetto said she had heard about North Coast Church partnering with Ramona High School on a campus improvement project in the past. Soon after she became principal at Olive Peirce two years ago, she introduced herself to the church’s Ramona pastor, T.J. McDaniel, to ask if Olive Peirce could be considered as a potential project.
“T.J. McDaniel is amazing and he connected me with multiple of the church,” Benedetto said.
“Basically, they took me around the campus and asked what I wanted them to do,” she said. “At first I suggested a few small things, and they said, ‘Dream bigger. We will make this plan and it will just be so special.’ So I did dream big, and they did it. A year and a half in the making and I can’t believe everything that they put together.”
One of the crown jewels of the school project is a new sensory garden with raised planter beds and assorted vegetable and flower plants that campus garden club and special education students will maintain, Benedetto said.
“Now they have a truly beautiful space that brings together the special education and general education population,” she said of the garden that is located in a back corner of the campus.
To complement the garden, church member Hannah Schwantner painted a “bright and cheerful” mural with characters and designs including clouds and flowers.
Another improvement are two brick walls the volunteers built on either side of the school’s parking lot. The walls will “Olive Peirce Middle School” signs so drivers will recognize the school’s entrance.
Staff and students are getting involved in thanking North Coast Church.
Shane Helmich, a STEM teacher and robotics coach, is building a “Thank You” sign that can be hung on a pergola, and video production teacher Jacob Kramer is having his students make a video that includes student and staff interviews about the Serve Your City project.
“To come onto a campus that is beautiful and well-maintained adds a bit of pride and a sense of happiness,” Benedetto said. “It definitely boosts the morale of staff, so how could it not for the students?”
McDaniel said the church and its congregation of roughly 425 will decide in July 2026 what their next service projects will be in 2027. They assess potential projects based on where there is the largest need and focus on projects that require a lot of labor and volunteer contributions.
A few of the significant contributors on this year’s projects included Ramona businesses, Piva Equipment Services, Pope Tree Service and Neighborhood Core Fitness & Gymnastics, McDaniel said. A variety of skilled tradespeople also donated their services, he said.
“Typically we try to work on something at schools and kid-focused projects and something that is adult focused in the community,” McDaniel said. “It was pretty fun doing the walk-through at Olive Peirce Middle School. We have a lot of families at the church with students there who served alongside their parents. It was fun to see it all done and hear the stories.”
