Is trouble brewing for Beth Sholom?

Everyone's a critic.

Not that they don't have a right to be. Congregants of San Francisco's Beth Sholom are just hoping a few grousing neighbors won't get in the way of their rebuilding project.

With a meeting before the planning commission scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 1, a few of the Conservative synagogue's Richmond District neighbors have been writing letters to local media outlets about their distaste for architect Stanley Saitowitz's design for Beth Sholom's new main building. At least one neighbor compared the building plan to a salad bowl afloat in a pool of water.

Mark Gunther, the chairman of the synagogue's building committee, said he's met with a number of neighbors, and a few of them have had questions about the impact of a major construction project on their lives. Others have questioned Saitowitz's design, which recently won the American Institute of Architects' award for best unbuilt design in Northern California.

Gunther and a handful of fellow congregants are planning to testify in Beth Sholom's favor at the Sept. 1 meeting. Gunther doesn't know whether he'll be speaking unopposed, but it wouldn't surprise him if an orator or two spoke against the renovations.

If things go well at the meeting, Beth Sholom will receive a conditional use permit from the planning commission and continue with its roughly $12.5 million project, with a proposed groundbreaking date toward the end of 2006.

And if things don't go well?

Gunther paused. "Well, I haven't thought about that, to tell you the truth," he said. "We don't expect that to happen."

Saitowitz, who is currently in China, couldn't be reached for comment. But, reacting to the "salad bowl" quip, Neil Kaye, a project manager in the architect's San Francisco office said, "Everyone has their own opinion. Of course it's insulting, but what are you going to do?"

Salad bowl or not, Gunther said the synagogue's "modern design" is also highly functional and responds to the congregation's many needs.

Instead of 23 separate entry points, now there will be one. And in addition to replacing the synagogue's main building, the new structure will unite the three smaller structures on the campus at one central point (currently, one must pass through a series of catacomb-like alleyways to travel from one building to another).

And, most of all, the synagogue will finally be able to demolish a 1938-era main building that was never particularly glamorous and is now not particularly functional.

"That building has been here a long time," said Gunther. "And it's really at the point now where it needs to be replaced."