OUR COMMUNITY ON THE COVER
Pretty in theCity Downtown Synagogue plans $4.5 million renovation. STACY GITTLEMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
ble thanks in part to major gifts from the William Davidson Foundation, the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, the Gilbert Family Foundation and the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation. A COLLABORATIVE SPACE Renovations will increase the footprint of the five-floor building from 12,000 to 15,000 square feet, potentially providing office and conference room space for other Metro Detroit Jewish agencies such as the Jewish Community Center, Hazon and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. It will be topped off with a rooftop garden/event space for everything from weddings to social happy hours. IADS President Vadim Avshalumov said the synagogue’s renovation plans reflect its continued on page 16
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JULY 15 • 2021
RENDERINGS FROM LAAVU DESIGN OF DETROIT
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ith more than $4 million raised so far toward its $4.5 million capital campaign to completely renovate its building on Griswold Street, the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue (IADS) marks its first century in serving Detroit’s Jewish community as it looks ahead to its next. From its humble beginnings in 1921 in a house on Rosedale Court in Detroit’s North End to the 1962 purchase of its current Downtown building, the site of the former Fintex clothing store, the shul has remained Detroit’s longest continual Jewish congregation. Construction is scheduled to begin in October after the holidays and be ready for a grand reopening just in time for Chanukah 2022. The capital campaign, which continues through this fall, is possi-
