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It's a very sweet new year indeed for the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

With last week's unanimous vote by the San Francisco Planning Commission to reject landmark status for the 68-year-old center, JCC staff and supporters can look forward to starting anew, with a state-of-the-art, seismically improved facility.

The next step is for the JCC architects and staff to meet again with the Planning Commission to obtain approval for the specifications of the new building, designed by Kevin Hart and Lev Weisbach of Gensler Associates, and the Steinberg Group. This is expected to happen in November, according to Nate Levine, executive director of the JCC.

Levine said that if all goes according to plan, the center, which is on California Street and Presidio Avenue, will be razed a year from now and construction of the new facility will commence.

While JCC proponents maintained the center was operating at a deficit and needed an improved facility to sustain itself financially, a group of preservationists had hoped to designate the building as a city landmark.

Led by architect Arnie Lerner, the preservationists came up with an "adaptive reuse plan," which involved an addition to the existing building, at a cost of $19 million more than the projected cost for the new center.

At the August meeting in front of the Landmark Commission, preservationists argued that because the JCC was partially designed by esteemed San Francisco architect Arthur Brown Jr., who designed City Hall, Coit Tower and Congregation Emanu-El, among other Bay Area landmarks, it should be preserved.

Architects who have designed the new JCC have said the reuse plan would create a center that was more dysfunctional than the current one.

The Oct. 5 meeting at City Hall was in many ways a repeat of the one that took place on Aug. 16, with many of the same people making the same pleas. But this time, the outcome pleased supporters of a new JCC.

Proponents turned out in force and took their turns at the podium, including Supervisor Barbara Kaufman as well as John Rothmann, president of the Laurel Heights Neighbors Association, and Ron Blatman, president of the Presidio Heights Neighbors Association. The two men are both longtime JCC members.

Douglas Goldman said through various philanthropic endeavors, his family had committed $13 million to the project, but those funds were conditional on approval of the new building; there was no reason to invest such a sum into the current one.

Each speaker reiterated that the programs offered by the JCC — which serves approximately 3,000 people a day, half of them not Jewish — were more important than the building itself.

An employee of the JCC for 20 years, Jeffrie Palmer added some comic relief, as he did at the last meeting. He reminisced about the old building, saying he met his wife there. Despite those happy memories, he said, "When the toilets overflow, and the ceiling falls in and the tiles crack, it's my old building saying, 'Let me go.'"

When Lerner took the podium, he blasted the JCC for coming up with a "bogus" $19 million figure, saying the public had been "misled and manipulated" by the JCC to believe the reuse plan would be the end of the center.

Almost no discussion preceded the board's vote, and the gallery burst into applause at the outcome.

Outside in the hallway, one woman clasped a bottle of champagne, while a man said into his cell phone, "We've got a new home."

"I'm delighted by the turnout and support of the community," a jubilant Levine said immediately after the hearing. "The Planning Commission saw that the programs, not the building, are the most important thing. The JCC will continue to serve San Francisco for a long time to come."

Rabbi Doug Kahn, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, echoed Levine's enthusiasm.

"It's a great day for the Jewish community and a great day for San Francisco," he said.

Lerner was not so enthusiastic, but he said he was planning no further action. "I apologize to the Jewish community that I wasn't more persuasive," he said. "They've been sold a bill of goods with this design, with architecture that is inferior to what they could have had with the new construction reuse scheme."

"I'm sorry the JCC leadership weren't more visionary and cognizant of their own culture," he added. "We've lost something we'll never get back."