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Friday November 24, 2006

Osher Marin JCC nearing completion of yearlong upgrade

by joe eskenazi
staff writer

The rule of thumb with JCCs is pretty straightforward: If members can’t work out, they’ll walk out.

Judy Wolff-Bolton knows this all too well. The executive director of the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center watched membership decline from 2,900 to around 2,300 in a seven-year span; a span in which the JCC’s workout facilities and locker rooms became seven years older and more antiquated.

“We really needed to update the center in order to better serve the community,” she said.

“The underlying aspect is our membership had been declining because of the fitness center being out of date, small rooms, not enough equipment and not enough exercise rooms.”

Wolff-Bolton realized that the JCC needed to shape up, and the result was a $7.5 million upgrade kicked off back in January.

The most tangible result is the new Koret Center for Health and Fitness, which is due to open in January 2007. The JCC built a two-story structure in its gym atop space formerly occupied by one of a pair of side-by-side basketball courts. The new structure is chock full of weight-training equipment, exercise bicycles and treadmills; the center has also revamped its aging locker room facilities.

“It’s a large workout space, about three times bigger than what it was,” said Patty Gessner, a member of the JCC’s renovation committee and the center’s director of marketing and communication.

Workout facilities are definitely the workhorses of the JCC world — they bring in and sustain memberships, which in turn provide funding for more intellectual and esoteric activities. But the JCC didn’t limit its renovations to gym paraphernalia.

The center developed a wing of the building that had been utilized only as storage space, creating a teen lounge, child care facility and an art studio (complete with kiln) that will be shared with the adjoining Brandeis Hillel Day School. The former large storage closet is now called the Toole Center for Youth and Family.

And the center has also created the Kurland Center for Lifelong Learning by enclosing a courtyard and creating a pair of small rooms that can be combined into a giant one for wedding or b’nai mitzvah receptions.

Wolff-Bolton said the JCC has managed to keep 95 percent of its programming up and running during the yearlong construction project. And membership is on an upswing — 100 new families joined up in the past two months.

“One of the main goals of this renovation is that a lot of Jewish households that were once members will rejoin,” she said.

“Attrition is down and retention and acquisition are way up.”

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