“I couldn’t be more pleased,” said Robert L. Habush Monday night after the Whitefish Bay Village Board unanimously voted to accept plans for expansion and remodeling of the Karl Jewish Community Campus, owned by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. “I think it went better than I hoped” and “holds out the promise for a bright future.”
He had more than one reason to be pleased. As a volunteer member of the MJF’s legal team for the project, Habush — president of the law firm Habush Habush & Rottier, S.C. — worked behind the scenes to help create the plan that was approved Monday.
During the past “couple of months,” Habush and MJF attorney Bruce Block met with Bay village attorney Christopher Jaekels and Gregg Gunta, a lawyer for Cities and Villages Mutual Insurance Company, “to see if there was any possibility of settling the matter” without going to court, Habush told The Chronicle in a telephone interview Monday.
The MJF had filed two lawsuits against the village objecting to the way the village government had handled the matter and to the scaled-down plan board members had crafted and approved in May.
One suit in federal court alleged that the village had committed religious discrimination against the MJF in its treatment of the plans. The other suit in state court charged that the village board had acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” way in evaluating the MJF’s proposals.
Habush said that he and Block were “adamant” that the federation would accept only the proposal that the village board, meeting as a committee of the whole, had approved last March and that the federation had accepted at that time.
But “the roadblock was bridged,” Habush said, by the idea of constructing an access road to the campus from Port Washington Rd., a proposal that Habush said originated with Gunta. The common council of the city of Glendale, which has jurisdiction over that stretch of Port Washington Rd., gave its approval for this at a special meeting on Nov. 12, according to city administrator Richard Maslowski.
In her report to the Bay board Monday, village engineer Mary Jo Lange said the access road would carry an estimated 300 to 350 vehicles a day, thereby removing them from Whitefish Bay residential streets next to the campus. Initially, vehicles will only be allowed to turn right into and out of the road.
The agreement also said that of the cost of constructing this road — originally estimated at $202,000 but which Lange said would more likely be $207,000 — one-third would be paid by the MJF, $100,000 by the insurance company and the balance by the village.
According to Habush, one does not usually see an insurance company paying for something like this; but Cities and Villages Mutual thought the MJF “had a good chance” to win in court and did not want to incur the expenditures.
Moreover, said Habush, the contract between the firm and the village said that the firm could refuse to pay for village legal actions if the firm felt that the village government was being “unreasonable” and acting “for political reasons, not valid reasons.”
Village attorney Jaekels made a statement “for the record” Monday saying, in part, that Cities and Villages Mutual told the Bay that if the Bay refused to accept the agreement, the firm “will no longer be under an obligation to provide a defense in this matter, and it will discontinue providing such a defense.”
Other provisions of the approved plans include:
• Construction of an addition of no more than 42,000 sq. ft. to the south building. The MJF had accepted this last March even though it is less than the 58,500 the federation sought in its original proposals two years ago. However, the board last May scaled it back further to 31,000, which the MJF rejected.
• Construction of a new parking lot on the west side of the south building containing 103 parking spaces.
• Agreement to a 25-year moratorium on any new development on the campus, subject to a majority vote of the board.
• Removal of the “two-per-month” limit on wedding and bar/bat mitzvah celebrations that could be held on the campus.
• Agreement by the MJF to cooperate in any future efforts to expand or improve the Port Washington Rd. access road, including eventually enabling left turns into and out of it.
Habush was not the only federation representative gratified by the result. Attorney Robert H. Friebert, whose firm was in charge of the lawsuits, termed the settlement “great” and “an appropriate resolution for everybody,” and added that the “cases will be dismissed.”
Attorney Stephen L. Chernof, chair of the MJF’s Karl Campus Development Steering Committee, called the agreement “a very good outcome” and “a good resolution of difficult problems.”
From Israel, where she was traveling with the federation’s Partnership Mission, MJF president Judy Segall Guten said that “Being in Israel and hearing this was incredibly meaningful” because of the community spirit found there and in the campus effort.
She also praised MJF’s legal team as “brilliant and phenomenal,” commended Block for “living this for the last two years” and lauded Habush and Chernof for being “selfless” volunteers. Habush, she said, “was willing to do anything and everything and not take a penny for it,” and Chernof “never stopped looking for ways to resolve the issue…. I learned so much about leadership from watching him.”
Also from Israel, Jay R. Roth, president of the Harry & Rose Samson Family JCC, the largest agency housed on the campus, said the approved plans “will allow us to do many of the things we envisioned to enhance the quality of services for the Jewish community.”
However, this does not mean construction can begin immediately or even soon. Habush said the village and the MJF have to complete a “settlement agreement” that will be presented to a federal court for oversight.
Trustees and several village residents during a public comment session raised questions about the proposed access road, including its impact on the village-owned Water Tower Park and whether it needs to be fenced to protect children.
Nevertheless, in a joint release, the village and MJF said they “have worked very hard over the past two years to develop a plan that strikes a reasonable balance between the interests of the immediate neighbors and the needs of the Federation, the [Harry & Rose Samson Family] Jewish Community Center and the other agencies occupying the campus…. While the rezoning process has been lengthy and difficult, both parties look forward to a positive long-term working relationship.”
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