Now that the Fox Point village board has approved the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s plans for expansion and improvement on the Fox Point part of the Karl Jewish Community Campus, the next step is “to move full force ahead” to make the final plans, get them approved by appropriate governmental bodies and raise the funds for the campus improvement project, said MJF president Judy Segall Guten.
Richard H. Meyer, MJF executive vice president, said the federation is “working hard to create timetables for moving the project forward”; and added that it would be “a tremendous goal and target date to reach” if groundbreaking could be held in the late summer or early autumn of 2005.
On Tuesday night, the seven-member Fox Point village board unanimously approved plans for the small section of the campus — 3.5 acres of the total 26.5 — that lie in that village.
Most of the campus — including the south building that houses the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center — lies in the village of Whitefish Bay. That village board approved plans for that part of the campus last November.
The Fox Point part of the campus includes the campus’ north building that houses the Milwaukee Jewish Day School; the Hillel Academy Jewish day school; the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the federation; and the Children’s Lubavitch Living and Learning Center.
The plans call for expansion of the north building, increasing its total floor plan by 20,000 sq. ft., within an overall footprint of no more than 15,000 sq. ft. and “likely much less,” said Bruce Block, attorney for the MJF, in the presentation he and architect George Meyer of the Kahler-Slater firm made to the Fox Point board.
Block said that this is being sought “not to expand or increase enrollment” in the schools there, but “to serve the existing student load better.” The facilities, he said, are overcrowded and “need an upgrade.”
In addition, the plans call for a reconfiguration of the north parking lot that will include pushing its paved surface to the north border of the campus and creating a 15-ft.-wide strip of landscaped buffer on the MJF-owned residential property to the north.
After about an hour-long discussion, the village board approved the plans with the condition that there be a “restricted covenant” stating that the MJF-owned residential properties north of the campus must continue to be residential properties if the MJF should decide to sell them.
Block told The Chronicle Wednesday that the MJF now has to put its development plans into final form and “start working through the normal permit process.” That usually means obtaining approval from the two villages’ building boards.
Funds will also have to be raised in a capital campaign. Meyer said the MJF “has not yet finalized the amount” that will be the campaign goal. He added that “it is traditional in capital campaigns” to have 50 to 60 percent of the funds raised “before building begins and before the campaign goes public.”
And Guten said Wednesday that “We at the federation have been thinking and planning for years in preparation for this moment, when we now have the support of the villages involved. Now we have to make it happen.”
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