As I wrote in an earlier post, my congregation, JRC, is currently building a brand new synagogue facility on the site of our old building. Construction officially began last month is slated to be finished Nov./Dec. 2007. In the meantime, I’ll be posting perodic reports of our progess over the course of the coming year.
We’re particularly proud that we are attempting to create the first certified “Green Synagogue” in the world. Specifically, this means we hope to be certified at a LEED Gold Level by the US Green Building Council. The pic below is an artist’s rendering of what the final product, designed by the architectural firm, Ross, Barney, Jankowsky, will look like.
JRC moved into temporary quarters this past summer and the demolition of our old synagogue building commenced in September. It was an exciting moment for us all – the first tangible evidence of so many years of devoted work and preparation. Still, we were unprepared for how it would feel to see our synagogue being demolished (see below). While it was clear to us all that our old facility was too small, too decrepit, and not terribly functional to our needs, it had still been our spiritual home for over twenty years. Many members told me it was unexpectedly traumatic to see our synagogue, the place of so many sacred memories, torn down in this way. It felt much better when the site was eventually cleared out of debris and was unrecognizable as its “former self.”
We had our official groundbreaking ceremony toward the end of the demo process. On a very cold Sunday afternoon, we gathered together, sang songs, recited blessings, then we busted out the hard hats and gold shovels for the obligatory PR pix. Carol Ross Barney, our architect, and Ann Rainey, the Alderman of our ward, were among the digniaries who spoke movingly at the ceremony. Now we were officially on our way!
One very cool aspect of our green building project is the recycling of the concrete from the front steps and facade of our old facility. Two huge grinders were brought onto the construction site for this purpose so the old concrete could be ground up and reused in our new foundation. If any JRC members ever feel homesick for the old building, I’ll just remind them that they they’re still standing on it…
(Thanks to David Parisi of dPict Visualization and Howard Ellegant for the great pix.)
Shalom Rav 
This post reminds me of a somewhat irritating experience.
A few years ago, my synagogue, Congregation Dorshei Emet, in Montreal, decided to build a new synagogue to replace the one we had. (We had outgrown the original building; there were various related reasons, but I will not get into them here.)
The construction took one year, from the summer of 2002 to the summer of 2003
During that year, we davened at the Snowdon Y, officially known as the JCC.
One day, during the spring, after the Shabbat service, as I was at loose ends that day, I decided to walk to the site — it was some fifteen blocks away — to see how things were going..
When I got to the site, I was struck by the total absence of signage — there was not the slightest indication that the structure being built at that location was intended to be a synagogue
I complained to someone in the executive, who, naturally, hid behind the usual answer these days — security mandated the absence of signs.
The problem with that answer, though, was that at the building site just down the street — the site for a Lubavitcher facility — although there may not have been a sign specifically saying that the building going up was going to be a synagogue, there were signs indicating quite clearly that the site was part of the Jewish community.
Oh, so you mean the Lubavitchers are less concerned about security than we are?
I hardly think so.
David Pinto