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This Week's Top Stories

Musical Buildings

As one school takes over another's building, some
see opportunity while others see obstacles.

JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER

T

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR
JOHN BLAKE PHOTOGRAPHER

STORY ON Pty 6

he domino effect started
over a year ago.
The Bloomfield Hills
School District reclaimed a
building it had rented for 18
years to an independent Catholic
school.
Then, Kensington Academy,
the-Catholic school, bought the
Beverly Hills building that
housed Jack Faxon's Interna-
tional School, which in turn this
month bought the Lubavitch Ed-
ucation Center in Farmington
Hills.
The domino effect continued
with the Lubavitch girls high
school renting the Zionist Orga-
nization of America (ZOA) Cul-
tural Center in Southfield,
forcing three long-term Jewish
tenants out of the building.
But that's not all.
Now two of three Jewish
groups formerly housed in the
ZOA building are looking for a
place to meet, and the Lubav-
itchers are preparing to start con-
struction on their Synagogue
Campus of Living Judaism in
West Bloomfield.
For many of the individi Isis in-
volved in the school building
swap, the turn of events is a wel-
come change.
Jack Faxon, the former state
senator and founder of the In-
ternational School, said the move
from a rented abode to a perma-
nent home will allow the grade
school's foreign language im-
mersion program to flourish.
"We finally have a home of our
own," said Mr. Faxon.
The Farmington Hills build-
ing, formerly known as the Jack
and Miriam Shenkman Educa-
tional Center, on Middlebelt
Road had housed the Lubavitch
Institute for Advanced Studies
(LIAS), an accredited arm of New
York's Tuoro College, as well as
Bais Chaya Mushka, the girls
portion of Cheder Oholei Yosef
Yitzchak Lubavitch.
The International School fin-
ished its move into the building
the day before the school year
started on Sept. 4. It paid $1.35
million for the former Lubavitch
- structure, but will continue to
rent space evenings and on week-
ends for the next year to LIAS.
"It is a strange feeling to walk
into a building that used to be
yours and suddenly you are a

tenant," said Rabbi Yitschak Ka-
gan, the associate director of the
Lubavitch Foundation of Michi-
gan, the fund-raising arm of the
Lubavitch community.
Rabbi Kagan said the proceeds
from the sale of the Farmington
Hills building will enable the
start of construction of a 13-build-
ing complex next to the Jewish
Community Campus in West
Bloomfield. Within a year,
Lubavitch hopes to have the first
facilities completed in order to re-
locate LIAS to the new campus.
The Lubavitch group raised
a total of $6.5 million, which will
pay for the construction of the
first three buildings and the land
acquisition, site preparation and
architectural design for the re-
mainder of the campus. A syna-
gogue/religious center, a library
and a post-graduate study cen-
ter will comprise the first three
buildings.
The next phase will complete
the additional buildings — in-
cluding student and faculty hous-
ing, a retreat center, a Jewish
history museum, a ritualarium,
a kitchen and administrative of-
fices — at e cost of $5.5 million.
Theie is no set date for com-
pletion of the construction.
"We can smell it. We can feel
it. It is there," said Rabbi Kagan
of the first three buildings. "It is
going to be wonderful."
While the Lubavitchers are
pleased that construction has
been launched for the West
Bloomfield site, they are also
seeking a permanent home in ei-
ther Southfield or Oak Park for
the boys schools of the Cheder
Oholei Yitzchak Lubavitch. The
Yiddish immersion school cur-
rently consists of an elementary
boys school, senior boys rabbinic
school, and the Bais Chaya
Mushka girls school, which will
remain in the ZOA building. The c C f,
two boys schools are currently lo-
cated in the Lubavitcher Center 7
on Nine Mile Road in Oak Park. co
"The boys are squashed to- —
gether in there. We hope to find `,"...c.1
a suitable building in the next
year," Rabbi Kagan said, adding
that there will then be two per-
manent Lubavitch presences in
the metro area: the West Bloom-
field campus and the Oak Park
or Southfield cheder.

LU

LUI

SCHOOLS page 20

