By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
In some ways, the design of Jewish Family Service’s new addition could be looked upon as a contradiction: Creating wide-open spaces allows for more privacy. But as the machines move in next month and begin the actual construction of a dream that has been years in the making, the finished product will do exactly that.
“We’re building a structure so that clients can come in and feel welcomed, but also have the dignity and privacy they need, because so many of the services we offer are confidential,” said Dianne Loeb, JFS’s board president.
When the $9 million, 19,000-square-foot addition to JFS’s current Danz building in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood is complete, the centerpiece of the design will be an open staircase that takes visitors and staff between the new building’s two floors.
The stairway is “community-oriented, meant for social interaction,” according to Claudia Berman, JFS’s chief operating officer. “It’s important to how the building is used.”
A courtyard and gallery walkway will connect the new structure to the current building, which will be modified to allow counseling clients more privacy as they wait for appointments.
“It’s always been a little uncomfortable sitting in the waiting area for counseling and you run into a friend who’s volunteering,” Berman said. “We have long been wanting an area more private than anything we’ve ever had before.”
The primary goal of the new building is to bring under one roof JFS’s many services, such as Seattle Association for the Jewish Disabled and Homecare Associates. Those two programs currently reside in different locations around the city.
“This building represents our ability to serve more clients better,” Loeb said. “It’s not any kind of a project just for a project’s sake, it’s a way we can do better service.”
Two Eastside offices that serve refugee and immigrant populations will remain in their locations.
The economic downturn has played a part in this expansion’s design, and the past month has shown that it is playing a part in funding the project. JFS applied for a $2.3 million grant from the State of Washington’s Building Communities Fund. The state’s Department of Commerce has ranked the project as its fourth priority on a list of 22 upcoming projects, but if Gov. Christine Gregoire’s unfunded preliminary capital budget for the 2011-13 biennium is adopted by the legislature, JFS would lose that funding source. The loss would come in addition to a slew of critical cuts to social services (and the agencies like JFS that provide them) expected to be enacted during the legislative session that began Monday.
“There will be so many painful cuts in this year’s operating budget for our clients and for JFS, we feel we need some help to meet the increased need,” Lisa Schultz Golden, JFS’s chief development officer, told JTNews via e-mail. “The future of this funding is completely unknown at this point.”
JFS has engaged state legislators to advocate for project. Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D–36th) said he would “fight tooth and nail” to secure funding.
“You cannot look to the private sector and the philanthropic community to provide a basic human safety net without supporting those private institutions with some of the core infrastructure necessary to deliver the very services the state is bailing on,” Carlyle said. “[The state] can’t have it both ways.”
The agency has given up on an expected $800,000 in federal funding that had been earmarked through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s
economic development initiative, a part of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that Congress failed to pass in December, according to Schultz Golden.
The money raised from donors has been designated specifically for the building project, and programs won’t be affected should there be a shortfall in government funding, but JFS officials will need to figure out how to make up for the lost dollars.
Still, the project will move forward as planned, Berman said, and in its current time frame, because the timing won’t get better. Interest rates that have been at historic lows are creeping up and building costs are also on the rise. As soon as the remaining permits are approved, Sellen Corp., the building’s contractor, will be able to begin.
The structure being built is scaled back from what originally was going to be 10,000 more square feet and an underground parking lot. Covered parking will now be at street level, pushing the main floor up one level and eliminating a third floor of interior space.
That design was “clearly overbuilding for what we knew in the near term,” Berman said. “This is not overbuilding. It has growth capacity.”
Growth, however, has manifested itself in the past two to three years in increased demand for JFS’s social services. This includes record numbers at the remodeled food bank that opened in March 2010. Agency officials see the expansion as necessary to continue to provide their services at the levels their burgeoning client base needs.
“We see needs growing and growing and growing,” Loeb said. “We want to be able to meet those needs, but be proactive and really anticipate those needs and really fulfill our mission of Jewish values.”
The new expansion building is designated by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program as LEED Silver, the third-highest level of energy efficiency. Part of that designation comes from parking and shower facilities for bicycle commuters as well as an architectural focus on natural lighting. At the same time, architects were able to save money by changing the original design of floor-to-ceiling windows in offices to partial walls, so rooms will get the same amount of light but with lower-cost materials.
The building will also hold the agency’s first elevator, making the entire campus accessible for disabled visitors and staff, and the top floor will have conference space available to the greater community.
Several pieces of artwork have been donated, including a Venetian glass vase by Dale Chihuly, a painting by Northwest artist Meg Holgate, and a nine-foot sculpture in the courtyard by local artist Julie Speidel.