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December 25, 1998/ 6 Tevet 5759, Vol. 51, No. 14
Federation OKs basic plans for JCC campus
Phoenix center to house several Jewish agencies
MICHELLE ACKERMAN
Staff Writer
Basic plans for a Jewish community campus in northeast Phoenix have been approved by the executive committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix's board of directors.
The campus is planned for a 10-acre plot of land at the southwest corner of 40th Street and Shea Boulevard.
The plans, which those involved emphasize are yet to be finalized, call for a 140,000-square-foot, multi-level facility, which would include a preschool, classrooms, library, fitness facility and swimming pool. Agencies calling the place home would include the federation, the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, the Bureau of Jewish Education, the Council for Jews with Special Needs, a satellite for the Phoenix Hebrew Academy, and the proposed Jewish Community High School.
In order to help planners determine what facilities the campus should include, Chicago-based Levenberg Marketing Group sent out a survey to 4,500 homes in the Greater Phoenix area this past summer. Responses were tallied from the 594 - or 13 percent - "useable" responses received.
Each of the prospective tenants had to give a presentation to Langdon Wilson architects, the firm designing the facility, to help the architects determine how much space to allocate each organization at the site.
"What we are going to be creating is a central meeting and activity space - a haven for one-stop shopping in the Jewish world," said Mark Shore, executive director of the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center.
Ron Bookbinder, head of the Jewish Community Campus Task Force, said that all the plans need now is a little bit of fine-tuning, which will be finished within the next few weeks.
"It's all moving forward; it's all on track, and we're very excited about how it's shaping up," said Fred Zeidman, assistant executive director of the federation.
The executive committee approved the plans on Tuesday, Nov. 24. Once they are finalized, the next step is the capital campaign, Zeidman said.
"We don't want to debt-finance this project," he explained.
Past projections regarding the estimated cost of the project were $12 million to $20 million. The final cost, as well as the amount of money needed to be raised from the capital campaign, hinge on the completion of the final plans and specifications and the resulting bids submitted by contractors.
The target date for ground-breaking is the first quarter of 1999, Shore and Bookbinder said. The project will take from 12 to 20 months to complete, they said.
Shore said his goal is to open up the facility by the beginning of the 2000-2001 school year.
"Things of this magnitude, with all its facets and facilities, take a lot of patience and a lot of effort and time, which we are doing. It's very professionally being done," said Bookbinder.
Engineers from CMX Group Inc. will be overseeing the construction. Robin Reynolds Creative will provide advertising and public relations services to the fund-raising campaign.
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