JCC Heading To The Sales Block

By the time you read this, a cornerstone of Lowcountry Jewish life may be up for sale. The board of the Jewish Community Center (JCC) voted earlier this month to sell its large facility on Raoul Wallenberg Boulevard.
Mosha Kalinsky, the board’s current president, confirmed last week that the decision had been made to move on and allow for a “rebirth” of the JCC. Kalinsky said the board is interested in creating a center “without walls” that runs its programs in many of the other facilities located in the area. This has been accomplished in many other cities throughout the nation, according to Rabbi Adam Rosenbaum of Synagogue Emanu-El, one of the area’s largest synagogues.
Kalinsky said the board wanted to pave the way for the “next 50 years” of the JCC in Charleston. Ronneca Watkins, the JCC’s executive director, said the mission to unite the roughly 7,000 members of the Jewish community in Charleston would continue.
By Tuesday of this week, Kalinsky said, the board was expected to have selected a real estate broker to represent them in the sale.
Founded in 1946 and located in West Ashley since 1956, the JCC has offered just about every program under the sun — some of which Jewish people had been restricted in joining at other local establishments in those days.
These days, the JCC houses, but does not run, the 140-student Addlestone Hebrew Academy, a K-12 independent Jewish day school founded the same year as the JCC came to West Ashley, and where the school relocated to in 1987.
This time of the year, it runs a lively summer camp program.
In addition to the classrooms, the JCC comes with a swimming pool, weight room, fitness rooms, meeting spaces, tennis and pickleball courts, indoor basketball court, offices, art rooms, and other spaces for larger events.
Earlier this spring, ground was broken for a new Addlestone, a state of the art 28,000-square-foot facility located on the grounds of the JCC that is being funded by the Jerry and Anita Zucker Family Foundation. The school is slated to be open by fall of 2015.
And it seems the construction of a new school, which has been the center’s largest tenant, may have hastened the sale of the JCC.
“The burden of maintaining this structure, and the cost of doing so, is a tremendous amount of money,” said Stewart Weinberg, the president-elect of the board who will soon replace Kalinsky.
There are already a host of suitors and plans for potential new uses.
The JCC facility had already been a tempting real estate bone. A group of senior citizens living West of the Ashley had been prodding the city and the county to purchase the facility for a senior center.
When that didn’t pan out, and Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr.’s plan to build a site-specific senior center near the Roper St. Francis hospital campus in West Ashley did, the senior citizen group continued to push for local governments to designate the JCC as the temporary senior center until the Roper St. Francis building was erected in a few years from now.
Weinberg said a small college might be appropriate, or even an affordable senior-citizens facility, with classrooms converted into apartments. Members of city and county councils have pushed for purchase for use as a center or a school.
“Whatever it becomes, it will be a complement and a good neighbor to the (new) school,” said Kalinsky.
Rabbi Rosenbaum said a feeling of loss within the community should be expected.
“This is a bittersweet moment; but it was something that needed to happen,” said Rosenbaum. He added that as society has become more tolerant and inclusive of those with differing religious views, facilities like the JCC have more competition.
“Sometimes good things come from bittersweet moments.”