On May 7, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center are planning to file papers with the village of Whitefish Bay asking the village plan commission to allow plans for renovating and expanding the Karl Jewish Community Campus to be considered by the village government.
The step after that, said JCC executive vice president Jay Roth, will be for MJF and JCC officials to make a presentation to the commission on May 21. This would constitute a “pre-petition conference,” Roth said, at which the commission will decide whether it believes the plan is worthy of review by the village.
“We would hope,” said Roth, “that what would happen is that the plan commission, recognizing all the work we’ve done and the dialogue we’ve had with the village over the past year, would refer it to the board of trustees.”
That body then needs to agree that the plan merits review and to send it back to the plan commission. At that point, a “full and extensive review” of the plans would begin, which MJF and JCC officials hope will result in the plans being approved.
JCC president Jane Gellman said that “after all the work that we’ve done it would be hard to imagine them turning this [request for review] down. It’s been almost 11 months of work in cooperation with the village. It has to be that the plan merits consideration.”
Both Gellman and Bert Bilsky, MJF associate executive vice president, said they believe the village will give the plans a “fair hearing.”
MJF and JCC officials had planned to inaugurate this process last month. However, they decided to postpone until May partly because of the village elections on April 2, in which incumbent village president James H. Gormley was defeated by Kathleen J. Pritchard.
MJF and JCC officials also wanted to wait until results of a traffic study the village had
commissioned from a Chicago firm were delivered, which is scheduled to happen this week. “Without that, the pre-petition conference would be more difficult,” Roth said.
“We’re hoping [the village’s study] will corroborate what we have projected not just in terms of numbers but in terms of the layout of the campus,” Roth said.
Bilsky said he feels “optimistic” about the coming process and lauded the JCC and MJF representatives who “have been doing a tremendous job” of meeting with members of the village board and “keeping them informed.”
But he also said he feels “anxious” to get the construction going because “the services and needs that we have not been able to fulfill because of the wait are just as important now, if not more, than they were a year ago. The needs are pressing in.”
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