Coming next year to the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco: a wrecking ball.
An architect’s last-ditch effort to save the JCC’s 66-year-old Spanish-style building was officially quashed last week by center officials.
Architect Arnold Lerner and others had offered the JCC an alternative to destroying its historic home and constructing a $50 million new one on the same site at 3200 California St.
But Lerner’s plan for remodeling and expanding the existing building had “serious shortcomings,” according to Nate Levine, the JCC of San Francisco’s executive director.
“It doesn’t work programmatically,” Levine said. “It doesn’t allow the JCC to survive.”
After analyzing the proposal over several weeks, the JCC’s project planning committee voted May 11 to not pursue the Lerner plan, which Levine said was the fourth or fifth alternative to be shot down.
“We don’t have any other plans. That’s it,” Levine said.
“We have been convinced that preserving the building is not the way to preserve the JCC of San Francisco.”
Informed of the committee’s decision, Lerner sounded as depressed as a Boston Red Sox baseball fan might be if told that 88-year-old Fenway Park was to be torn down.
“It’s a wonderful building invested with the memory of the San Francisco Jewish community since the 1930s,” Lerner remarked. “Something will be missing when they tear it down and build a new one.”
A longtime advocate of preserving old buildings through creative architecture, Lerner said he did all he could to save the building from demolition.
“If people regret this in years to come, I’ll say, ‘Don’t blame me. I tried,'” he said.
At this point, there appears to be only one way that the building could be spared: if it is granted landmark status by the San Francisco city Planning Department. But even Lerner admits that’s a longshot.
“Nothing is moving in that regard,” he said. “It’s just a shame.”
The wrecking ball is scheduled to hit in September 2001, with construction of the new building slated to take 18 to 24 months. The entire project will cost some $70 million.
Levine was not against saving the aesthetically pleasing old building, but “the focus cannot be primarily on aesthetics,” he said.
Lerner’s alternative plan “fell way short of our minimum requirements,” most notably, in terms of space and design, explained Levine. The design would hurt the JCC’s “ability to generate membership and other revenue sources essential for the JCC to survive as an institution.”
Not only did Lerner’s design offer about 10 percent less space, but many aspects of the proposed layout “didn’t have the right kind of space in the right location,” Levine said.
For example, he said some storage, supervision and kitchen areas were not adjacent to the areas they were supposed to serve.
Also, getting from the garage to the lobby would require two elevator trips. Many seniors would have to take a lift to get to a lounge on the mezzanine level. And the restaurant facing California Street wasn’t at street level.
“One of the complaints they made was, ‘How can you have a successful restaurant that’s half a level down?'” Lerner said. “Just because it’s not at street level doesn’t mean it can’t be successful.”
Also, the Lerner design called for 366 seats in the theater compared to 500 in the Gensler Associates schematic design the JCC unveiled in March.
“We couldn’t match their [original plans] perfectly, but does that mean the center is going to fail because you can’t seat an extra 50 people?” Lerner asked.
Similar features of both plans included a Judaica store, a six-lane lap pool and a fitness complex.
However, another sticking point in the Lerner plan was the allocation of 45 fewer parking spots than the 180 or so that the JCC wants.
The Lerner proposal called for 48 spots to be built beneath Menorah Park, a housing complex for low-income elderly around the corner.
But Levine called that a “totally unfeasible idea,” saying it couldn’t be built unless Menorah Park was vacated during construction.
Lerner argued that evacuation of Menorah Park would not have been necessary. And furthermore, even if those 48 spots couldn’t be built, he asked, “How many spaces do you really need?”
Finally, Levine said the costs of the Lerner plan were “significantly higher” than the Gensler plan. He didn’t say how much higher because “we haven’t finished the cost analysis.”
Levine stressed that he wasn’t upset with the proposal. “I appreciate the effort and it was a sincere try,” he said.