Space to accommodate growth

Joseph Henson, President

Good news for Beth Tikvah — the demographics are in our favor.

The two generational groups, the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers, with the highest rate of religious participation have a retirement rate that is increasingly driving growth in Southwest Florida through relocation. As Beth Tikvah is the only synagogue affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism in Collier County, we attract traditional Jews and are running out of places to put people. This season, to seat all who attend our Shabbat morning services, we sometimes must move additional seating from the social hall into the sanctuary. At a few of our excellent Kiddush lunches, people had to stand as we did not have enough chairs. Our current solution is using our rear garden where we have tables with umbrellas for members and guests.

But growth means Beth Tikvah needs additional space and our property lease ends in four years. So, as Roseanne Roseannadanna famously said, “It just goes to show you, it's always something — if it ain't one thing, it's another." Bottom line, Beth Tikvah is now actively searching for land on which to build a new synagogue or an existing property to retrofit.

Our Board has determined that to meet the current and future space requirements, we need a building of about 7,500 sq. ft. This would be about 38% larger than our current synagogue. In addition, we would add an open-air social area of about 65 feet x 65 feet, which is similar to the size of our current backyard. Our new building proposal would allow an interior design focused on member use and comfort. For one thing, the kitchen would not take a large swath from the center of social hall. Plus, we can build a true kosher kitchen with separate fleishig and milchig work spaces. This size building could finally accommodate sufficient storage areas so our library is not, in fact, just a catch-all storage space.

Accommodating a campus this size would require a lot of approximately 3 to 3.5 acres. The building and open-air social area would cover just over one quarter of an acre. Landscaping and the synagogue’s security perimeter would take a little more. But the greatest land use would be for parking, ingress and egress. Zoning regulations for parking are keyed off of the building’s square footage and in our case, would necessitate roughly 100 parking places. The next biggest land use is generally for water/waste control needs. As expected, cost is driven by acreage and location, so this will be a big-ticket item.

Given this potential cost structure, our preferred choice remains locating, then retrofitting, an existing building that already has sufficient parking available and does not pose unreasonable hurdles for zoning as a religious building. However, in speaking with our commercial real estate broker, there are significant hurdles to Beth Tikvah retrofitting a building. Principal is availability of properties in general and, second, finding a building that is both the right size and configuration. Until then, the search continues for acceptable existing space. Retrofitting an existing building has the clear advantage of (potentially) reducing the time needed to move. It could also offer cost-saving advantages, an important aspect for a congregation of our size.

Successfully completing our building project is important in a number of respects. A central one is that to build and maintain a flourishing Jewish community in southern Lee and Collier counties, the viable presence of all three primary branches of Judaism must be present. The congregational bodies are supported in turn by a strong network of Jewish social, educational, youth, communal and cultural bodies. Clearly, we all benefit from Jewish Federation of Greater Naples being dedicated to developing a thriving Jewish community. What we as Jews must do is offer our support financially and through active participation.