Supermarket of Services : 12 Agencies Offering Help to All Find Home as $15-Million Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus Has Its Opening

The sunny, second-floor atrium at the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus is quiet and mostly bare, but, as Ike Heller walks through, he imagines the lilt of a five-piece band and a crowd of dancing couples.

Unlike most daydreams, there’s a good chance this one will come true after the grand opening today of the newly constructed, 75,000-square-foot community center on Vanowen Street in Canoga Park.

Four years ago, when Heller began working at the site, its three cottages and ranch-style fence gave it the look of the horse ranch it used to be. It ceased to be a ranch when the parent agency of the organization Heller directs, the West Valley Jewish Community Center, bought the six acres in 1976.

Heller’s organization is the largest of 12 social-service agencies to have facilities on the $15-million campus, which is being paid for through fund raising by the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

The social services to be provided from the center range from social and recreational activities for youths and senior citizens to support for battered women, job placement and legal advice.

“It’s one-stop shopping for social services,” Heller said.

Although federation officials are quick to point out that the services will be available to all members of the community, they acknowledge that the center is intended to become a focal point for the growing West San Fernando Valley Jewish community.

An October, 1986, Jewish Federation Council study found that there are 206,000 Jews in the Valley, outnumbering the 169,000 in the rest of the Los Angeles area, mostly on the Westside, the longtime base of Los Angeles’ Jewish community, said Steven Huberman, the council’s community services director.

The West Valley is growing because of attractive housing costs, but the westward migration also is a movement “away from the centers of Jewish organizational life,” Huberman said.

The Milken campus, named for an accountant who was a prominent member of the Valley Jewish community until his death in 1979, “is an attempt to try to provide a focus for Jewish community life” in the Valley, Huberman said.

“We see this as a center point, a rallying point for cohesion,” he said.

Yet the center also is welcomed by broader segments of the West Valley community, whose leaders note that the site’s size and range of services and facilities, which will include an art gallery, a fitness center and a 400-seat auditorium, will make it unique in the area.

“It helps the whole community, whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish,” said John Caulkins, president of the Canoga Park Chamber of Commerce.

“I don’t think there’s anything quite like it anywhere in the city,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who helped launch a similar but smaller “one-stop” community center operated by Family Service of Los Angeles on Victory Boulevard in Van Nuys.

“The Jewish Community Campus is really bigger and broader than anything that exists so far,” said Picus. Both centers are in her district.

Multilevel Garage

There are classrooms, playrooms and lounges for all ages. Next to the swimming pool and locker rooms is a weight room. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center will provide health-screening services. Neighbors’ concerns about parking were allayed by a multilevel garage on the site.

The most practical feature of the facility might be the arrangement of office space in its community-service wing, campus officials say. Different social-service agencies will be working next door to each other or across the hall, providing an easy referral system for people who come for help, Heller said.

For example, a family might apply for a scholarship to allow a child to enter a West Valley Jewish Community Center day-care program. The real problem, Heller said, might be that the child’s parents are unemployed; the Jewish Vocational Service is nearby and can offer career counseling and job placement.

On the same floor are youth programs, such as Jewish Big Brothers and First Step. The Jewish Free Loan Assn. provides limited no-interest loans to eligible families. Bet Tzedek Legal Services provides free legal advice except in matters of crime, immigration and family law.

Some of the agencies were hesitant to work so closely under the same roof, Heller acknowledged.

Fears Allayed

“They were afraid they would lose their autonomy,” he said. But the council, which provides much of the agencies’ money, persuaded them, he said.

Each service is non-sectarian, and everything the facility has to offer is available to non-Jews, said Lionel Bell, chairman of the finance and administration committee of the Jewish Federation Council. He said an important reason is that financing of the center was aided in June by the sale of $9.5 million in tax-exempt bonds by the City of Los Angeles.

Help in Refinancing

The city acted as a vehicle to help the Jewish Federation Council refinance the project at a lower cost, and no city funds were spent or committed. But city officials said it was the first time a nonprofit institution other than a hospital received tax-exempt financing from the city for a project.

“I had a couple of phone calls from people who were upset about the bonds,” Picus said. “They thought someone was getting a government handout.” The callers were satisfied when they were told that city funds were not involved, she said.

About three weeks after the City Council approved the bond sale, vandals defaced the inside of the campus building with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Rash of Incidents

The vandalism, which coincided with a rash of anti-Semitic incidents in the West Valley, concerned campus officials, but “I wouldn’t overemphasize it,” said Harmon Ballin, a North Hollywood attorney and co-chairman of a campus planning committee.

Los Angeles police found no suspects but learned that the vandals, probably teen-agers, found paint on the construction site and might have been motivated by mischief rather than anti-Semitism, Detective Fred Duitsman said.

“There is absolutely nothing religious about this program,” Huberman said.

But it is no accident that much on the Milken campus is to be oriented toward Jewish culture and ethnicity.

The kitchen adjacent to the auditorium is kosher. The Jewish Vocational Service has interpreters for Hebrew and Farsi, the language of Iran, where many Jews are fleeing the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Reminder of Slayings

In the fitness center, a sign next to the weight room reminds of the slayings by terrorists of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. The 75-foot-long swimming pool is shallow at both ends for more teaching space; Heller said an old Jewish rabbinic law implores that children should be taught to swim by age 13.

The pool was not finished as of last week, and all the services are not expected to be in full operation until November, said H. Jack Mayer, director of the San Fernando Valley region of the Jewish Federation Council.

The council’s goal is to raise $15 million. Most of that would go for construction and repayment of the bonds, Mayer said. But officials aim to have enough left for a multimillion-dollar endowment to pay for upkeep, he said.

The Milken family, including Beverly Hills financier Michael Milken, contributed more than $5 million, Heller said.

To make the campus complete, planners apparently did not forget fund raising: They filled one room with telephones for soliciting donations.