Printer Friendly

Email to A Friend

Friday June 30, 2006

S.F. Jewish facility nearing end of $55 million upgrade

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

Like anyone who’s going through a major home renovation, Daniel Ruth really wants to tell you about his new dream kitchen.

But rather than bore you with details about the matching pot holders and dish towels he picked up (at such a price!) from IKEA, Ruth would rather talk about soon having the ability to cook 1,300 meals a day in style. That’s because Ruth’s home is the Jewish Home, the San Francisco senior facility where he’s the CEO.

Ruth and the Home are rounding third base on a massive $55 million upgrade to the Silver Avenue facility; by September he hopes to cut the ribbon on the Barbara and Richard Rosenberg Family Center, the newest of five buildings on the Home’s campus. And in the basement of the family center — the dream kitchen.

Replacing the Home’s current kitchen isn’t just a matter of upgrading the electric stoves to gas cookers or painting over 1970s day-glo interiors. The current kitchen, which dates back to the 1920s, is equipped to cook meals for around 120 residents. The Home of 2006, however, houses around 430 people (and a cooking staff that is also four times larger than the 1920s retinue).

“Clearly we put our last Band-Aid on our nutritional service center many years ago,” explained Ruth.

The kitchen is just one of a number of improvements the Home hopes to have up and running by September. While meals are being whipped up in the basement of the Rosenberg Family Center (which replaces an archaic and recently demolished wing of the Home), a battery of health clinics will occupy the ground floor and research and meeting areas will take up the second. A long, subterranean tunnel will extend from the kitchen to the Home’s Friedman Pavilion, making circuitous deliveries of hundreds of meals several times a day a hassle of the past.

“It’s not a very elegant way to deliver food when you have to wheel through programmatic and common space,” said Ruth.

Regarding the health clinics, which range from dental to podiatry centers, he said, “When you’re dealing with a clientele with frailties either physical or cognitive, having to take them off-campus to medical appointments can be very disconcerting.”

Furthermore, with all the new space for clinics, residents won’t have to wait in the hallways anymore.

Once the new family center (and its kitchen) are up and running, the Home can junk the current kitchen and use the space for a new synagogue, a creative arts studio and a wellness center. That portion of the Home’s reconstruction project should be done in 2007.

The Home’s ongoing capital campaign slightly predates Ruth’s four-year tenure as CEO. Along with Director of Development Mark Denton, Ruth credits David Friedman, the chairman of the Home’s board, with leading a fund-raising effort that has, to this point, fulfilled all but $2 million of the $55 million goal.

Of the $55 million, roughly $33 million has been applied directly to the costs of construction, with around $22 million set aside for an endowment fund. That fund, however, is no luxury. Denton notes that the vast majority of the Home’s residents are on Medi-Cal, and having a pool or ready money is now a necessity to “withstand the ongoing issues of healthcare.”

Did you find this article interesting? Subscribe to our FREE newsletter and you'll be notified each week when "J." goes online. We'll tell you about the most important stories of the week and give you a link to each one.

This page contains a BETA version of Amazon contextual links. They are marked by the dashed underline.  Your purchases support our site. At times they point to items which are not related to the actual link. Please alert us by email if you discover objectionable links.