Mark your calendars for Sunday, July 15, 2007, from 12 to 4 pm. Beth Sholom will be holding a party, “Topping off and Toursl” on 14th St. in front of the construction site. There will be music, food and non-stop tours of our future home, which will have reached the apex of construction! Come hang out, experience our new home, and meet our wonderful and dynamic new spiritual leader, Rabbi Micah Hyman. For more information or to RSVP you can contact Beth Jones at BJones@bethsholomsf.org or 415-221-8736, ext. 105.

More photos below. Also check out the Beth Sholom Website to view a series of chronological photos to see how far we’ve come since December.

First View of the Sanctuary Bowl

CBS Treasurer Allan Schwartz with Project Manager Linda Herman

View of the Work Site - May 8, 2007

View of the Formwork for the Sanctuary Bowl

A First View of Social Hall

 
San Francisco Water Department Installing New Water Main on Clement Street

Well, as you can see from the most recent photos, things are getting serious at the site! Most of the basic structural work downstairs is done; when they get back in down there again, putting up stud walls and hanging drywall will be the order of the day. It’s difficult to walk around down there now because of all of the scaffolding in place to support the second floor structural work. These are the most exciting developments: the work is proceeding on the second floor. We have access by ladder to the second floor, allowing our more nimble guests to go up there on tours. The open and welcoming nature of the plaza, the grandeur of the sanctuary, and the size of the social hall are all apparent.

On the design front, the big decisions that were deferred at the beginning of the process have now been made. Most of these decisions are having budgetary implications, pushing the project over our hoped for budget, but only by about 5%. Some examples, we thought we’d be putting in our old kitchen equipment, but got a good deal on new stuff ($120K instead of $350K) and have decided to buy it. The sanctuary seating decisions have been made.  Bookholders (believe it or not) are turning out to be expensive; the combination of purchasing additional seating AND buying bookholders adds over $100K to the seating budget. The evolution of the yahrzeit wall design has produced a great design, but is adding some tens of thousands. The basic qualities of the main ark were in the budget, but the detailed design decisions about materials are adding some more tens of thousands. You can see the drift here; we are building this building once, and it simply is not prudent to not build things that can most efficiently be built now. These kind of ‘adds,’ as they’re called, have increased the budge by about $500K; we are looking to those of you who have not yet given, or who have not yet given to capacity, to help with these items.

My Tuesday building tours are ongoing; make a reservation with Eric in the office. I also will be conducting tours this coming Sunday, May 20th. The first one is at 4:00 pm, and I’ll do as many as needed to serve everyone.  Please make a reservation with Eric. Finally, we’re looking at having a ‘topping out’ party in the street on June 24th, and I’ll be doing tours that day as well.

The Building Committee is offering a tour of the Beth Sholom building site on Sunday, May 20, at 4 p.m. This will be the ONLY Sunday tour offered. If you have been unable to attend one of the Tuesday tours, we urge you to sign up for this rare and truly inspiring glimpse of our future congregational home.
Space is also available on the tours being offered on Tuesday afternoons over the next several weeks.
Please contact Eric in the Beth Sholom office (415-221-8736, ext. 101, or just reply to this e-mail) to sign up for a tour. Space is limited.

This week’s big news is: one, the pouring of the structural slab, and two, the arrival of the first of the massive, pre-built forms to shape the sanctuary bowl. The building of the bowl will be an exacting job, undertaken in several steps, each of which needs to be incredibly precise (perfect, really) to produce the finished room. The curvature is in three separate arcs, each of which needs to be precisely placed so they integrate and exactly match the curve on the other side. After these are in place, the steel formwork will be built and the curved surface poured. Then the interior form of the vertical wall is put in place. After that, the steelwork for the vertical walls will be undertaken. The workers have to be very precise, because if a piece of steel touches the form, it will cause a dimple that will be reflected in the finished wall inside the room. After that the exterior form will be placed and the two vertical walls poured in a single day. By early July, the forms should come down and you’ll be able to see the finished look.  Amazing.  I continue to be excited by the project and impressed by the professionalism of all the people working on it. Please come on a site tour!

The plaza structural slab has been poured.

View of social hall ground floor from plaza; by the end of May the 2nd floor will be poured and this view gone forever.   

View of Plaza from the southeast corner looking at the school building; you can begin to feel how big it is. 

Entrance to the synagogue; the doors will be between the two steel structures; the framing and formwork visible below is for the sanctuary lobby and entryway.