When she visited the JCC East Bay’s future campus last week, CEO Susie Cohen Crumpler found a pallet of young olive trees ready for planting along the walkways of its new preschool and play yard.
On Aug. 24, the olive trees, along with grapevines and date palm, pomegranate and fig trees, will welcome up to 120 children ages 6 months to 5 years when the JCC’s preschool relocates to the East Bay Jewish Community Campus. With nearly 70 kids registered so far, enrollment for the preschool is still open for some age groups.
While the campus in North Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood will not have a gym or pool, the 3-acre property will include a basketball court, wellness studio, central grassy area, kosher cafe, teaching kitchen, library, teen center and classrooms, among other features in the renovated office complex.
“When you walk in, you really get this feeling of being home, being safe, in a good place to connect,” said Cohen Crumpler, who stepped into her CEO role in September. “I think that will be a beautiful space for people to gather and connect. And for us, it’s about bringing people together to celebrate Jewish life.”
The new campus has multiple ceremonies ahead. In time for a ribbon-cutting ceremony scheduled in September, the second and third floors of the main building are expected to house the offices of 15 to 20 Jewish nonprofits. Cohen Crumpler hopes the arrangement will spur direct collaboration between the JCC and its tenants on new events and programming.
“I think that is one of the most special pieces about this new Jewish community campus,” she said. “It’s going to be incredible to have representatives from these organizations who we can work with on site and come up with new ways to serve the community through our shared resources, thinking together, bringing our expertise in all areas.”
The site’s grand opening is set for March 2027.
As the campus approaches the final stages of renovations and landscaping, Cohen Crumpler has been busy touring the campus with prospective tenants. There is still room for other interested organizations.
“We had so much interest to come over to the campus,” she said.
Organizations in the process of finalizing their leases include Jewish LearningWorks, Ayin Press and Repair the World. The Jewish Federation Bay Area has been using already-renovated space on the campus for over two years.
The campus will operate on a shared expense model — depending on how much space they rent out, each organization will pay a share of the campus operating expenses, such as security, utilities, maintenance and landscaping. The JCC itself will have the largest footprint, taking up the whole first floor of the main building, which will include a suite of offices, an event center and the new preschool.
The preschool will double the capacity of the one at the East Bay JCC’s current location in North Berkeley, a former school it has inhabited since 1978. The JCC announced plans in early 2025 to sell the property, but it will continue to operate an after-school program there through the 2026-2027 school year while it looks for a new property to serve families in Berkeley.
Located at 5957 Chabot Road between Claremont and College avenues in Oakland, the new campus was formerly the corporate offices of Nestle-owned Dreyer’s ice cream.
Moses Libitzky, a real estate developer, philanthropist and J. donor, bought the property for $41 million in 2019. It’s surrounded by trendy restaurants, cafes and shops and is about a third of a mile from the Rockridge BART station. The bottom floor of the JCC’s own building on the College Avenue side will itself include seven retail businesses.
For now, Cohen Crumpler is thrilled to watch the campus bloom with five of the Seven Species mentioned in the Torah.
“I was delighted to see the young olive trees arriving on campus,” Cohen Crumpler said in an email to J., comparing their planting to the JCC establishing its own new roots in Oakland.