By Cindy Mindell

Rendering of the entrance of the new facility

BRIDGEPORT – Over the last 150 years, Jewish communities in urban America have waxed and waned, usually migrating to nearby suburbs and either rebuilding communal institutions in their new neighborhoods or maintaining aging facilities on original sites.
Such is the case in Bridgeport, whose Jewish community dates to the early 1850s and has migrated from center city to outer urban ring to surrounding suburbs. Along the way, Jews have established the usual communal institutions, erecting a Jewish Community Center (JCC) in 1911 in downtown Bridgeport, and opening a new JCC 50 years later on Park Avenue, up the road from two synagogues. The building is currently home to the JCC and UJA/Federation of Eastern Fairfield County, organized as the Jewish Center for Community Services (JCCS).
In three years’ time, a new communal facility will inhabit that property, a unique collaboration between the Jewish Home for the Elderly and the JCCS. The two organizations are joined by the Thriving Jewish Community Initiative, a five-year-old grassroots “visioning” effort that has engaged the Eastern Fairfield County Jewish community in defining its needs and direction.
At a series of communal meetings throughout Eastern Fairfield County last month, Jewish Home CEO Andrew Banoff and JCCS president and CEO Steve Wendell outlined how plans for the new campus are shaping up.
“For me, the excitement of this collaboration is creating new opportunities to serve the Jewish community,” says Wendell. “This is not about closing a building, it’s about building a new future.”
Designed by Perkins Eastman, the new campus will include facilities and services both specifically designed for the Jewish Home day and resident population, and open to the community at large. An “intergenerational” front lobby will include an open common area flanked by a kosher café and children’s play area. Now a 360-bed facility, the new Jewish Home will contain some 260 beds and assisted-living “neighborhoods,” inspired by the decade-old Green House model of home-like institutional-living settings for the elderly.
In addition to nursing-care and assisted-living “households,” the new facility will include rehab and outpatient services, including adult day care. An exercise and learn-to-swim pool and a fitness center will be open to the Jewish Home population and greater community, as well as to children in the daycare center housed in the building. UJA/Federation will maintain office and meeting space in the building.
The JCC building will remain open through summer 2013, offering summer-camp and daycare programs. Groundbreaking is planned for August and the JCC building will be shuttered in early September. Construction will be completed within an estimated two-year period.
During the construction period, UJA/Federation and its associated programming will continue to operate from locations throughout the community, with local synagogues serving as meeting-places for Jewish communal organizations like BBYO, Hadassah, ORT, and the Jewish Historical Society.
All current JCC memberships will end on June 30, followed by monthly extensions. JCC and Jewish Home leadership may offer current JCC Fitness Center members a special membership in an area fitness facility during construction.
The JCCS has made a lead gift of $2 million toward construction of the communal aspects of the new campus, including the pool, fitness center, and UJA/Federation rooms. The funds are committed from the net proceeds of the sale of the current JCC building and property.
Leaders of JCCS and JCC of Greater New Haven are exploring a collaborative summer-camp program with the JCC of Greater New Haven, which would to be held at the Woodbridge facility beginning in summer 2014. Wendell says that he and his leadership are also discussing collaboration programming with UJA/Federation Westport Weston Wilton Norwalk.
The JCC will catalog and digitize the plaques, photos, and other memorabilia documenting the organization’s 50-year history at its current location and the previous half-century of organized Jewish life in the Bridgeport area. Some items will be reinstalled in the new facility, with others posted on a new Facebook page.

Comments? email cindym@jewishledger.com