Like several other Milwaukee-area Jewish community institutions in recent years, The Torah Academy of Milwaukee, the community’s Orthodox day high school for girls, has run out of space.
The 16-year-old school, which today has about 40 students, is “using every closet” at its present, 4,500 sq. ft. site, the subterranean level of the office complex at 6789 N. Green Bay Ave., according to TAM president Jim Hiller.
So the school’s officials have initiated plans to construct a new building, to be located diagonally across from the current location, at 6800 N. Green Bay Ave., where a single-family house stands now.
So far, according to Hiller and Todd Miller, the building project chair and fund-raising co-chair with Dr. Rabbi Bernie Cohen, plans are proceeding smoothly.
Hiller said school officials met with neighbors “a couple of weeks ago” to explain the idea and to receive suggestions, some of which will be incorporated into the plans.
The City of Glendale Common Council has referred the school’s request for the new building and for rezoning the site to the Plan Commission, which has placed it on the agenda for its meeting on Tuesday, June 5.
“If everything goes smoothly and on time, our goal is to have demolition in August and a shovel in the ground by Sept. 1,” said Hiller. Construction would then be completed by “sometime between April and June” of 2008, he said.
Moreover, most of the money for the project has already been raised, according to Miller. He said the school is running a campaign for $2 million for the project, to which two lead grants have been made totaling $1.5 million. Of the remaining $500,000 needed, $333,000 has been raised as of May 11, Miller said.
Finally, the land itself is owned by Hollie and Armin Nankin. Mr. Nankin told The Chronicle in a telephone interview that they had purchased that land “to use for philanthropic purposes,” and they are “now making it available” to TAM.
“I think TAM is a great school and an important institution in the community,” said Nankin.
The plans call for construction of a single story, 10,000 sq. ft. building. Of this footprint, 8,000 sq. ft. will be “dedicated to classrooms and administrative areas, a teachers’ lounge, a davening area, a science lab and a computer lab,” said Hiller.
The remaining 2,000 sq. ft. will be a “multi-purpose room” that could hold 130 people and could be used for small religious or social gatherings and a gym space, he said.
Hiller also said plans call for the building to “be set back in the lot,” so it is away from traffic; and it will be constructed and landscaped to have “a residential look so it blends into the neighborhood.”
He added that school officials are “not looking to advertise the school,” so there will not be any big signs or significant lighting. “Our goal is to have it safe and secure for the girls and to be neighbor-friendly,” he said.
Hiller and Miller said the new building could serve a maximum of about 75 students. However, Hiller said that the school has made a study of its likely growth over the next 10 years, based on the populations of the “three feeder schools” — The Academy (Hillel), the Milwaukee Jewish Day School and the Yeshiva Elementary School.
According to this study, TAM’s student population is likely to be “in the low to mid 50s for the next five to 10 years,” Hiller said.
He added that TAM does not “actively recruit outside Milwaukee,” and moreover is not a boarding school, like the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study, the boys’ yeshiva on Milwaukee’s East Side. “That limits our growth possibilities, which we’re fully aware of and we accept,” he said.
In response to a question, Hiller and Miller both said the school had contemplated moving from Glendale into the city of Milwaukee, because the majority of TAM’s students come from YES and Milwaukee’s West Side Orthodox community, and because of the possibility of participation in the Milwaukee school choice program.
However, “we didn’t find a strong financial advantage” in moving to the city; and Glendale is both a “central location” readily accessible from Milwaukee to the south and Mequon to the north, and “a beautiful neighborhood,” Hiller said.
Indeed, the planned location is “a perfect hub for education and services to the general Jewish community,” and could help TAM “play a great role in serving the non-Orthodox,” said Nankin.
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