Jewish center’s future clouded

Five years ago, the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center was over budget, on the market and trying to console fleeing parents who were afraid to enroll their preschool children in a place that could cease to exist.

So it raised about $120,000 in three months, became an independent operator and last year finally saw enrollment begin to grow.

But the center never took ownership of its building and grounds, a 96,000-square-foot property in Sherman Oaks. And this week, its landlord, the Jewish Community Centers Development Corp., turned down a multimillion-dollar purchase offer from a benefactor who planned to renovate the 56-year-old building. That decision has sparked fears among those who use the center that it will be razed or developed for some other purpose.

“This is not just a Jewish center. It’s a real community center,” said Bernice Zahm, a center board member. “To take it down would be a real travesty.”

Negotiations between the center and the development corporation unraveled Tuesday, when the corporation’s board met to discuss whether it would take the offer from Hyman Jebb Levy, a Los Angeles philanthropist who made his fortune in the garment industry.

The development corporation had been considering his offer since early 2005, after Levy heard the center was having financial problems and matched a discounted asking price of $2.7 million to continue using the building as a community center. He also promised more than $1.3 million in renovations and capital to improve the property.

“I thought everything was under control, and then things started popping up,” Levy said. The development corporation’s discount was “generous,” but he said he worries that his intentions about what he would do with the property were under question.

“They’re concerned with me turning it into something other than a JCC,” Levy said. “If they look at my record, at what I’ve done in the Jewish world, they could understand that’s something I would never do.”

Corporation board members did not return phone calls Thursday, and a confidentiality agreement bars the center’s managers from divulging details of their negotiations. But Ariel Goldenstein, a center board member, said the corporation is entertaining offers closer to the property’s appraised value of about $6.6 million.

“Their gamble is that they will take a chunk of money and do something else, somewhere else, that is going to be good for community centers,” Goldenstein said. “That is the wrong premise. Had they come, had they seen what is happening in this community center, they may have a different opinion.”

The development corporation acquired the property title in 2001, when the struggling Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles was forced to divest seven centers, three of which were sold to repay debt. Since then, the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center has operated with funds from the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, nursery and day-care enrollment, and membership in its adult and elderly programs.

Kathy Weiss Squires, whose 2-year-old son is among 97 in the nursery school, said she chose to enroll him in September because the center felt welcoming.

“I’m not Jewish. My husband’s not Jewish. There’s all sorts of people here every day,” she said. “Our family has become the other parents that come here.”

Now, her son is on waiting lists at other preschools as they prepare for the center to close.

*

adrian.uribarri@latimes.com