In a session lasting until 1:30 a.m., the Whitefish Bay Village Board, meeting as a committee of the whole, voted Tuesday morning to move to the full board a motion concerning proposed changes to the Karl Jewish Community Campus.
The seven-member board will meet again on Monday, March 24, to make its final vote on the motion, which must pass by a “supermajority” of six to one or better.
“I believe we’re coming to an end” of the process, said Jay Roth, executive vice president of the Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC, the largest agency housed on the 27-acre campus. Roth is also encouraged that among the board members “there seems to be a general sense that we need most of the square footage” that the plans propose.
“I do think something will get approved,” said Bruce Block, attorney for the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, the owner of the campus. “There seemed to be an agreement, an acknowledgement that the activities that will be conducted on the campus [in the new and renovated structures] are consistent with what is going on now.”
Trustee Joseph Rice made the motion, which, according to his written text, calls for “approval by the Village Board of a Development Agreement between the Village of Whitefish Bay and the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.” This agreement would contain provisions that were discussed and sometimes amended during the meeting. These included:
• The MJF could not propose any further new construction on the campus for 25 years.
Though 25 years is “excessive,” Roth said that “the concept is correct…. It is fair to assure the neighbors that once the project is done they will face a relative number of years of stability” and that the JCC “can live with it.”
• The federation would agree not to “assert any claims or commence litigation” against the village.
• The proposed 58,000 sq. ft. development of the campus south building “shall be reduced by not less than 5,900 sq. ft.” Attempts to change this reduction to amounts ranging from 2,000 to 20,000 sq. ft. were defeated.
Roth said the JCC can live with the 5,900 sq. ft. reduction, which represents about ten percent of the proposed plan, but it “can’t live with a greater reduction than that.”
• Attendance in the proposed new community hall at any event other than the 12 per year special events “shall be restricted to not more than 336 [people],” which is the capacity of the existing Marcus Community Hall.
Block thought this was “a significant development,” given that the board last month appeared to want to remove the new community hall from the plans completely, as it did the proposed outdoor swimming pool.
In fact, as Roth pointed out, two aspects of the plans that appeared to have been rejected at the board’s previous meeting on Feb. 17 — a racquetball court and a family locker room — reappeared explicitly in the discussion Monday evening and implicitly in board members’ insistence that the JCC would determine exactly how its allowed new space would be used.
• The Village Manager, currently James Grassman, and the MJF shall develop a plan to create “regular usage/attendance reports in a manner easily accessible to the general public,” and shall regularly consult together “to monitor usage issues and resolve complaints.”
• The village will have the right to use the campus’ soccer fields.
One provision in Rice’s motion was decisively changed. He proposed that all loading and unloading of school buses take place in the campus’ north lot. By a six-to-one vote, this was changed to allow school bus pick up in the afternoon in the circular drive just south of the north building, as had been recommended by traffic experts and the village’s police chief.
Issues still unresolved, said federation officials, are the number of parking spaces on the campus and where they should be located. Two trustees, Scott Beightol and Ted Matkom, have said they oppose plans for a new parking lot to the west of the campus’ south building, near the new entrance.
But Stephen L. Chernof, chair of the MJF steering committee for the campus development project, said that traffic consultants hired by the MJF and the village and the village police chief all “recommended that the parking be on-site, not off-site,” as that “comports more with a residential neighborhood.” He added, “It is also logical to have parking on the west with the entrance on the west.”
Still, Roth said he felt encouraged to hear that village trustees do sense that on-site parking spots need to increase from the current 381 cars to “somewhere between 475 and 500…. We need to come back and help them try to understand the importance of the west lot.”
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