Hillel makes plans for new facility

Hillel officials hope to create a more modern and welcoming facility, which they hope to open in 2002. Pending final University approval, the Hillel building at 202 S. 36th Street will be torn down and a new, larger facility erected in its place as early as the fall of 2002, Hillel Director Jeremy Brochin said Friday. Though construction costs have not yet been determined and plans are still extremely preliminary, a recent proposal written by Brochin and Rabbi Howard Alpert, executive director of Hillel, said the new building may include a dining room with a maximum seating capacity of 350; two auditoriums; two student lounges; a larger library; a game room and two seminar rooms. More programming space for student performance groups, exhibition space for small programs, administrative and student offices and a rooftop patio are all possibilities currently being considered, but Hillel officials emphasized that all suggestions are subject to change. The current building, built in the 1930s, occupies approximately 11,000 square feet. The soon-to-be constructed facility will likely be more than twice that size, Brochin said. Hillel officials are meeting with Penn students this summer to discuss the plans for the building and are also interviewing several architectural firms. Brochin said preliminary goals are to hire an architect by the end of the summer and begin financing the project in December. Hillel officials said that they hope to begin demolition of the current building next summer. Once a final proposal has been drafted, Hillel will embark on what Alpert called an "ambitious fundraising campaign," with the expectation that parents, alumni and other members of the University community will help finance the cost of constructing the building. "You can't really begin to ask donors without clear plans about what you're after," Brochin said, though he declined to estimate exactly how much the building will cost. University officials announced in the spring that Kosher Dining would relocate this summer to 4040 Locust Street -- a site formerly occupied by Boccie Pizza and Saladalley -- after its former location, also the site of the Faculty Club, was chosen to become the new home of the Graduate School of Fine Arts. In the interim period between the demolition of the old building and the construction of the new one, Hillel will lease another section of the building at 4040 Locust Street, formerly occupied by Urban Outfitters, which will then host much of Hillel's programming and many events. According to Brochin, there had long been concerns among Hillel officials and Penn students that the current building, small in size and limited in resources, could not sufficiently accommodate the needs of Jewish life on campus and did not reflect the "richness" of the community as a whole. Hillel has worked during the last 15 years to alleviate the space crunch on campus, renovating the building itself in 1984 and helping create the Jewish Activities Center in the Quadrangle three years ago. But the construction of an entirely new facility represents the most ambitious effort made to date to provide more space for the Jewish community. "I think we're already a community that's busting out of the building," Brochin said. Still, Hillel officials expect the new building to provide not only more tangible room but also more unity and interaction among Jews of different backgrounds. "[The new Hillel building] will facilitate the blending of different communities," Alpert said. Both Alpert and Hillel President Sam Andorsky, a College senior, cited the proposed Kosher dining facility -- which is expected to seat significantly more students and provide both lunch and dinner in one consolidated space -- as a feature of the new building that could encourage more diversity among the students that frequent Hillel. The Hillel building had long served kosher lunches to students, while its next door neighbor, the Faculty Club, hosted kosher dinners. Another particularly striking feature of the new building, according to Andorsky, is the proposal's plans for a more "warm and welcoming" entranceway, which Hillel officials hope will prove more enticing to newcomers. "The new facility will certainly help bring people into Hillel. Many say they feel disoriented or intimidated when they step into Hillel, and a warmer, more inviting physical space can certainly help this," Andorsky said. "We hope the building becomes a place where all sorts of groups and individuals can feel at home," he added. Brochin and Alpert recently made site visits to the Hillel buildings at Harvard, Princeton, Tufts and Yale universities in an effort to gather some ideas for Penn's new Hillel building.

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