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A prime piece of Palo Alto real estate that Stanford University had been saving for a hotel-convention center has been offered as the new site for the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center.

Stanford last week announced a proposal to lease six acres on the southwest corner of El Camino Real and Page Mill Road to the city of Palo Alto for $1 a year over 51 years.

In turn, the city will allow the JCC to put up a new building, thereby eliminating a yearlong political headache caused by the school district's eagerness to claim the JCC's current leased site on Arastradero Road for a new middle school.

The new JCC will probably cost between $35 million and $50 million, and it won't be completed until the spring of 2003 at the earliest.

JCC, city, school district and Stanford officials announced the plan at a giddy press conference Oct. 6 at Palo Alto City Hall, which was also attended by many members of the Jewish community.

There were smiles and hugs all around, and Sandy Blovad, the executive director of the JCC, even embraced a City Council member once characterized as "not a friend" to the JCC.

"This is like a bar mitzvah," a gleeful Blovad gloated as streams of people congratulated him after the press conference.

"It's a tremendous relief," Councilmember Judy Kleinberg said not long after Mayor Liz Kniss had described the at-times contentious issue as having pitted the "competing needs from all different segments of our community" against one another.

"Stanford rescues JCC," a headline beamed Saturday on Page 1 of the Palo Alto Daily News.

Stanford is hoping that helping Palo Alto solve a troublesome situation earns the university some points in a bid to get a development permit.

The Mayfield site, named for an old elementary school about two miles north of the JCC's current spot, is near the geographic center of real estate-crunched Palo Alto as well as in an area of high Jewish density.

"It's across the street from the 94306 zip code, which is the most heavy concentration of Jews in the Bay Area," said Joel Spolin, a vice president on the JCC board of directors.

He cited a 1992 study that showed 19 percent of 94306 residents to be Jewish. "And that was eight years ago. There are four new synagogues since then. I think it's become even more Jewish."

Despite all of the good feelings about the proposal, it is not without potential snags:

*Stanford says it won't make the land available unless Santa Clara County approves a permit that would allow the university to develop new buildings and housing within its core campus area.

*The JCC can't immediately move forward on architectural plans because Blovad isn't sure which chunk of the eight-acre site is being offered by Stanford, nor does he know whether the city will hand over the full six-acre allotment to the JCC.

*The school district within the last couple of years had expressed interest in the same site for a middle school, but it shied away in part because of concerns about contamination from the land's previous occupant, a gas station.

Blovad said he has confirmation there is no toxicity on the site, but he admitted Tuesday, after some of the initial elation had worn off, that there are "a lot of unanswered questions."

First and foremost, he said, the JCC needs to know exactly what it is being offered and how much of the land the city might want for itself. "The center is now dedicating our efforts to getting as much information as possible about the site," Blovad said.

The most important question, however, is whether the County Board of Supervisors will approve a General Use Permit for Stanford on Oct. 31. The university wants to develop roughly six acres within its 700-acre Stanford Research Park over the next 25 years.

The GUP is by no means a slam-dunk, although county Supervisor Joe Simitian, a former Palo Alto mayor, indicated in the San Jose Mercury News that Stanford might have helped its cause by showing strong regional cooperation.

The JCC can now turn over the former Terman Middle School site, which it has leased for 18 years, to the school district without major legal warfare. The district had threatened to seize the city-owned property through eminent domain and the JCC had promised to fight back.

So the district gets its No. 1 choice for a new middle school.

The JCC — terrified that it might be left homeless in a city where "affordable real estate" is an oxymoron — gets a prime piece of land on which to build a new home that Blovad estimates will cost between $35 million and $50 million.

And while the residents of southwest Palo Alto may not have a valued community center right around the corner anymore, the new JCC will be only about two miles away. The city may also provide space in the proposed location for other nonprofits and perhaps city services.

Blovad expressed great joy over the site itself, which was home to various schools for nearly 130 years. Its longest resident was Mayfield Elementary School, which was built in 1924 and torn down in 1982.

He also displayed excitement about the prospect of a new JCC building, for which a fund-raising effort will start immediately. The JCC had already begun an $11 million campaign for capital improvements at 655 Arastradero Rd. before the school district turned its world upside-down.

"What this site will give us is an opportunity to develop from scratch an outstanding facility that will be extremely contemporary, with the concept not only of serving the community today, but of serving the community for decades to come," Blovad said.

However, there are some timeline questions. Blovad said the soonest a new building could be finished is in 2-1/2 years, or in March or April of 2003. But that's a best-case scenario; it could take also take up to four years.

"There are so many dynamics that have to take place," Blovad said. "Things really have to fall into place to make that happen."

If construction can't be completed speedily, there could be a problem. The school district wants to open the middle school at the Terman site by September 2003. In fact, district officials have stated a desire to begin moving into Terman in the summer of 2002.

Superintendent Don Phillips said the JCC could open temporarily on various empty school sites, but the JCC desperately wants to avoid making two moves.

"It would be extremely disruptive to our services, to our membership and to our revenues to have to move twice," Spolin said.

Blovad said JCC and school officials need to begin "sitting down and negotiating out the details" of the timeline.

Details also need to be worked out between the school district and the city, regarding the cost of the city-owned Terman site.

The city has said the land could be worth as much as $40 million. But school district officials, although they have been promised $10 million from Stanford to put toward the purchase price, are hoping for a price break since Palo Alto will receive the Page Mill-El Camino Real site from Stanford virtually for free.

That dilemma aside, new Stanford President John Hennessy, who assumed the post Sept. 1, concluded his remarks last week by saying, "This is a great solution to a tough community problem."

Wild applause ensued.

Isaac Stein, the chairman of the Stanford board of trustees and a three-decade resident of Palo Alto, then made a pitch for county supervisors to approve Stanford's GUP application.

"Stanford has recognized that if we can understand and support the needs of the community, it's more likely that the community can understand and support the needs of Stanford University," he said.

If Stanford is not granted the GUP or is otherwise prevented from going forward with its development plan by March 31, the university has the right to terminate the land gift offer to Palo Alto.

"And then we go back to square one," Blovad said with a slight groan.

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