• In addition to brick, the exterior of the building features a limestone imported from Israel. The name of the stone is Jerusalem Gold and is quarried in the south of Israel near the small city of Mitzpe Ramon. The stone for this project was quarried, shaped and finished prior to being transported by ship to Oakland.
• There are two pools and a hot tub in the new JCCSF, with a total combined volume of 134,800 gallons of water. If a normal garden hose were used to fill the pools, it would have taken a month to fill all three. The JCC did not use a normal garden hose, but it still took a couple of days.
• There is a time capsule in the lobby’s interior wall, to be opened in 100 years. Organizers collected personal commentaries from the community about life in San Francisco, being Jewish in the city and just living in today’s world. These are all included, along with memorabilia of the previous JCCSF building.
• The JCCSF contains approximately 320 interior and exterior doors. In addition, there are approximately 120,000 bricks on the exterior of the building, which were produced in Sacramento specifically for this job.
• There is a lot of paperwork involved in a large job site. The copy machine in the job site construction office has produced 26,000 copies since October 2002. That’s 52 reams of paper. And, yes, they recycle.
• The tower crane used for lifting material was 150 feet tall. The crane arrived from Germany for the job. Its pieces were carried to the site on 19 trucks. The heaviest hoisting by the tower crane was a 29,000-pound SkyTrak, a type of four-wheel forklift.
• All the structural steel for the new JCCSF was prepared in Utah and Idaho, then shipped to San Francisco. There is about 1,000 tons of structural steel supporting the building.