Anonymous Donor Rescues Oak Park Jewish Community Center from Closure

An Oak Park Jewish Community Center on the brink of closure is being saved by an anonymous donation.

jewish community center detroit

An anonymous donation is saving an Oak Park Jewish Community Center from closure. The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit decided to shutdown the facility earlier this year, because it was bringing in annual losses of around $1 million.  But Federation CEO Scott Kaufman says the community response to the news caused the organization to postpone the closure for a few months.

“If this was a baseball game, we’re in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and two strikes and we hit a grand slam, in that a very generous philanthropist in the community decided to not only renovate the facility, but help effectively subsidize the operation to the extent it needed to be.”

-Scott Kaufman, Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit

Kaufman says, with the new funding, he expects much of the building will be torn down and replaced with more efficient, modern facilities. He says construction could start as early as next spring. 

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