Call it Theodore Herzl meets “Field of Dreams.” If you build it, then it is no longer a dream.
When the dream of a vibrant community of children, seniors and everyone in between becomes a reality in two to three years, much credit will go to a cadre of volunteers who are the engine for the Campus for Jewish Life (CJL), a joint venture of the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, the Jewish Home in San Francisco and the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation.
Those volunteers are members of CJL’s design and construction committee. They spend countless hours planning, designing, budgeting and protecting the community’s interests for the campus that is projected to open on San Antonio Road in Palo Alto in 2007.
“It’s been quite exciting,” said committee member Neil Davidson of the plans for a new JCC, senior housing and assisted-living residences, buildings for the JCF and other nonprofits and affordable housing for moderate-income families. “The committee has been involved in acquiring the land, design and construction, marketing, and raising a good portion of the money.”
Of the committee’s 17 members, 11 are volunteers like Davidson, a retired real estate developer and former director of real estate development at Stanford, and all have professional experience in design and construction.
For Davidson, the project is a Jewish homecoming of sorts. “I had virtually no Jewish background other than when I was young, and no contact with the Jewish community other than family,” the Fresno native said.
Now he is on the board of the Jewish Home and relishes opportunities to share his knowledge with the Jewish community. “I am not a builder,” he said, “but I have administrative and organizational expertise. This project is an opportunity financially to contribute to the overall good of the project partners.”
Mike Adler, owner of Cannon Construction in San Francisco, recognizes the economic nature of the project. “I’m a businessman and I spend most of my time playing a real-life Monopoly game. And so more recently I have looked outside of that. It’s exciting to give back to the community. The committee is people putting their heads together to figure out how to integrate these cultures so it can resonate successfully. And how to do all that on an economic level.”
It’s a balancing act that Adler has perfected. The Campus for Jewish Life, said Adler, who is part of a business group that raises money for the City of Hope in Southern California, “is incredibly exciting because it’s a different model: putting older people smack dab in the middle of a JCC community hearkens back to a small town where we take care of our own.”
What gives Adler his greatest satisfaction is the example he hopes he is setting for his children. “I want them to want to leave the world a better place,” he said. And the Campus for Jewish Life represents the Jewish community’s most noble efforts, he continued, because the project “brings diverse groups together toward a common goal.”
Bringing groups together to complete large projects is nothing new for Susan Rozakis, another committee member and the project manager at Stanford who oversees large construction projects at the university. She was one of two women in the undergraduate construction program at Cal Poly.
“I am able to bring in my industry experience and background to the project and give advice and provide oversight,” said Rozakis, who volunteered as a kid at the Jewish Home. “And this is similar to what I do at Stanford: manage projects at a large organization with many diverse needs. Doing that is a challenge on any project. But it’s something I face every day.”
Rozakis heard about the project while she was on an intergenerational family trip to Poland last summer. She’s been on board now since last September. “Everyone’s been very professional and I’ve been impressed with the caliber of the people on the committee. It’s been very collaborative.”
Like Davidson and Adler, Rozakis was drawn to the CJL because it is unique. “It doesn’t happen very often,” she said, “where you get all different ages involved in a community. So to try and put together a place where Jewish people of all ages can get together is a wonderful thing.”