David Sachs
metro »
Federation still finessing
sustainable solution; building to
be demolished this fall.
Keri Guten Cohen | Story Development Editor
J
ust a week before the one-year
anniversary of the closing of the
Jimmy Prentis Morris (JPM)
Jewish Community Center building in
Oak Park came word that demolition of
the building will happen this fall, after
the High Holidays.
“It’s obviously taken a lot longer
than anyone thought to move forward
with a new building,” said Larry Wolfe,
president of the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit, at an Aug. 24
combined meeting of Federation and
the United Jewish Foundation (UJF),
Federation’s real estate arm, which
owns the JPM building.
“We’re not happy about the year —
it’s not fair,” he said, “but we can see
John Hardwick
Silence
Broken
On JPM
the light at the end
of the tunnel.”
This is the first
public statement
made by Federation
or the UJF about the
fate of the physi-
cal building since
Larry Wolfe
it closed Aug. 31,
2015.
A week before
JPM closed last year, Wolfe and
Federation CEO Scott Kaufman told
250 members of the Save the Oak Park
JCC committee that an anonymous
donor had stepped forward, pledging
to replace the current JPM building
with a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient
building.
A concept for the new building,
which will be smaller at 25,000-40,000
square feet rather than 50,000 square
feet, was to make it an outpost for
social service agencies to serve the
community, plus include meeting
rooms for various purposes, a fitness
area and a pool.
While no longer part of the JCC, the
new building will be managed by UJF’s
property management company, as are
other properties owned by UJF.
At two public forums that collec-
tively drew 750 people on Jan. 12-13,
2015, Federation committed to keep
the building Jewish, to continue pro-
gramming and to preserve the Jimmy
Prentis Morris name.
SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES
The anonymous donor committed
to pay for all physical aspects of the
Above: The Jimmy Prentis Morris
Building in Oak Park ceased being
a Jewish Community Center on Aug. 31,
2015, when the building was closed
to help the JCC recover from its
financial woes.
new project, including teardown,
engineering and architectural plans,
construction and allied costs, such
as landscaping. Another anonymous
donor emerged later, pledging $50,000
annually to help with operations.
“The donor is 100 percent commit-
ted to tear down the building and build
a new one customized to the needs of
the local community,” Wolfe said at
the recent board meeting. “The only
requirement is that the new facility is
self-sustaining.”
That requirement has not changed.
One year ago, in August 2015, Kaufman
said in a JN story that
the expectation of the
new donor is for JPM
to break even finan-
cially.
“We are still work-
ing very hard and
moving forward to
come up with a new
Scott Kaufman
facility that’s sustain-
able,” Kaufman said
two weeks ago at
a meeting with the JN. “The donor’s
big concern, which is shared by our
leadership, is that we can’t be a drain
on community resources — it has to
be sustainable. We’re trying to be very
careful that whatever we do has a high
rate of sustainability.”
continued on page 12
10 September 1 • 2016