When the rainy season comes, Rabbi Lavey Derby removes the manuscripts from his top shelf and replaces them with pots and pans to catch the rainwater, which will inevitably trickle through the roof.
To accommodate students, four of Congregation Kol Shofar’s 24 classrooms are crammed beneath the main sanctuary’s balcony.
“We’ve literally outgrown every inch of space,” said Derby in a slightly strained tone.
“The building we’re in, which was built by the town of Tiburon as a middle school in the 1960s, was comfortable for a community of 300. But it is really unsuitable for a community of our size,” which is twice that.
Finally, after years of searching unsuccessfully for a larger site and, later, opting to work with what it already has on its seven-acre plot, Kol Shofar has something to show for it. The Conservative congregation has come up with plans for four additional classrooms and a 4,000-square-foot multipurpose structure with a seating capacity of 600. The congregation also aims to renovate the landscaping, exterior and interior of the existing buildings.
A loosely united coalition of the synagogue’s neighbors, however, is less than enthusiastic about the plan.
At a Tiburon planning commission meeting earlier this month, members of the Tiburon Neighborhood Coalition and their lawyer, Roger Beers of Oakland, expressed concerns about augmented traffic, congestion, lighting and late-night noise.
At a follow-up meeting set for Wednesday, Aug. 24, the planning commission will decide whether the synagogue’s Draft Environmental Impact Report has been thorough enough, whether additional analyses are required or whether Kol Shofar will be forced to scrap the report and start again from square one.
Howard Zack, the co-chair of Kol Shofar’s building committee, hopes the commission doesn’t opt for the latter. An EIR, he notes, is as thick as a phone book, takes more than a year to compile and has already cost the synagogue more than $100,000.
And, he adds dryly, Kol Shofar isn’t hoping to congest the neighborhood with eager new congregants drawn to a brand-spanking-new synagogue. They just want to house the people they already have.
“Suppose you live in an 800-square-foot apartment. If you get married and have two kids and move into a 3,000-square-foot home, you’re not moving with the intention to have a 12-person family,” he explained.
Zack said the synagogue has tried to keep the neighbors abreast of Kol Shofar’s developments at every stage of the process, sending out 500 postcards at one point to announce neighborhood meetings and gain input. The result of that mailing? Two meetings with 17 and 12 neighbors, respectively, he claimed.
The issue with neighboring groups “may well turn acrimonious, but I truly hope it does not. That won’t serve anybody well,” said Derby.
Beers, the attorney for the neighborhood coalition, could not be reached for comment.
Zack stressed that, no matter how things go on Aug. 24, the building project is at an embryonic stage. Even in the best of circumstances, he doesn’t anticipate breaking ground until “sometime in 2006.”
Derby is also optimistic that the synagogue and neighborhood groups will reach a workable compromise.
“I truly believe we will be able to come to a reasonable accord with our neighbors, and as with any compromise, no one is going to get everything they want,” he said.
“It is my belief that because we are people of good will and we want the best for ourselves and the neighborhood and because are neighbors are people of good will, we will come to a reasonable understanding of what needs to be done.”