Shelley Hebert believes in miracles. Three of them, to be exact.
That’s how many it took for Hebert and her colleagues to jumpstart the new Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto.
If all goes well, sometime in late 2006 construction will begin on the sprawling complex off San Antonio Road and Highway 101, which should carry a final price tag of $200 million. The site will include a new Jewish community center, regional headquarters for the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, a Jewish senior living facility and an adjacent development of affordable condos built by the Bridge Housing Corporation.
Add to that the Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School down the street and you have a mini-metropolis in the making, or as Hebert likes to call it, Silicon Valley’s “Jewish town square.”
As a former JCC board member and currently executive director of campus development for the Campus for Jewish Life, Hebert has long been intimately involved with the project. And she remembers exactly how it got under way.
For years, the Albert L. Schultz JCC had been housed in a former public school leased from the Palo Alto Unified School District. Just as the JCC executive team prepared to undertake major renovations there, the district decided to reclaim the property to use as a middle school.
“Every inch of space in Palo Alto was either occupied or astronomically expensive,” says Hebert. “So the prospect of becoming homeless loomed. It wasn’t just about finding another facility. This threatened our existence. It was a major crisis.”
That was the wakeup call local Jewish community leaders needed. Realizing they could lose the JCC altogether, they settled on a more radical course. Rather than search for another rented facility, they decided to buy land in Palo Alto on which to build a permanent home. But with real estate at a premium, it didn’t seem possible a suitable property would come their way.
But it did.
“The first miracle was when Sun Microsystems decided to put its headquarters on the market,” says Hebert. “It was the largest piece of property to come on the Palo Alto market in 20 years.”
Three years ago, JCC President Carol Saal, board member Stuart Klein and their colleagues made an offer on the 12-acre site, and despite many competitors, Sun accepted the bid. But where would the money come from?
Miracle No. 2: an aggressive capital campaign, spearheaded largely by campaign co-chair Neill Brownstein, raised $22 million in six months, enough to clinch the deal, but nowhere near enough to complete the sale, let alone build the complex. “We couldn’t afford the whole 12 acres,” recalls Hebert. “We needed another partner.”
Looking around, the JCC team realized that Palo Alto had been suffering a critical housing shortage, and that the campus site could be used in part to build new housing.
Enter Bridge Housing and Miracle No. 3.
As the largest nonprofit housing organization in California, Bridge had built more than 10,000 units around the state. “They had the financial resources and were looking to invest,” says Hebert. “The opportunity to create accessible housing in Palo Alto was very attractive to them. And we realized that to have housing adjacent to a community center made for a very exciting combination. People living in these condos would become members of the JCC and take advantage of the facilities.”
In March, the Campus for Jewish Life finalized the deal with Bridge Housing, which agreed to buy back from the campus four of the site’s 12 acres. Bridge will build 230 townhouses and condos there, which includes a 65-unit senior rental project.
So now, Hebert and her colleagues are in what might be called “the quiet period,” but there’s really nothing quiet about it. First there’s the matter of funding. The ongoing capital campaign has set its sights on a $122 million goal.
Then there’s the matter of keeping the city of Palo Alto happy, something notoriously hard to do.
“We have to go through an approval process,” Hebert says. “We are master-planning the entire site, and we’re reaching outside the Jewish community for innovative collaborative relationships.”
The sheer magnitude of the campus project would seem to demand it.
Says Phyllis Cook of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Endowment Fund, one of the chief funders of the project, “This is the largest project the Bay Area Jewish community has ever undertaken, and one of the most important in decades. To come into being, this will require the total community coming together and supporting it.”
Right now, cruising by the site, one sees nothing but a vacant lot and an old office building earmarked for demolition. But Hebert looks at the same panorama and sees much more.
“We hope to begin construction as soon as mid-2006,” she says, “and to open the doors of the JCC and the Jewish senior residence by 2008. This appears to be a long horizon, but for a project of this size and complexity, we are moving as fast as we can conceivably go.”
With the announcement that architect Robert Steinberg and his Steinberg Group has been hired to design the entire complex, Hebert is more upbeat than ever. “We’re fortunate to have a firm of national caliber and one that is part of our community,” she says. “This is a second-generation firm. Robert’s father, Goodwin ‘Goody’ Steinberg, designed Congregation Beth Am” in Los Altos Hills.
Once completed, the campus will indeed resemble a small city. The senior residence will boast approximately 165 residential units. Add that to the Bridge condos and the total comes to nearly 400 new next-door neighbors.
“It creates a quality of community life that’s very exciting,” notes Hebert. “We want it to be a village-like environment, welcoming and inviting.”
The master plan includes multiple pedestrian walkways, a central square at the heart of the campus, an Israeli style midrahov, or main promenade, and a JCC cafe.
“We’re Silicon Valley,” says Hebert, “and we want to do something reflective of our Jewish community in our place and time. But at the same time, we are eager to evoke the experience people have in Israel and other places fundamental to Jewish life.”
Coupled with new JCCs in Foster City and San Francisco, the Campus for Jewish Life bolsters the notion of a Jewish renaissance under way in the Bay Area. Certainly Hebert concurs.
“All these projects are ambitious,” she says. “The big picture is of the vitality of Bay Area Jewish life. We’re members of a worldwide Jewish community, but what you see here is people committed to reinvigorating local Jewish life.”