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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/20360/full/20360/downturn-turns-up-serendipitous-site-for-palo-alto-school/ <br /><br /> <b>Downturn turns up serendipitous site for Palo Alto school</b> <br /> Friday, August 15, 2003 | by <p>ABBY COHN </p> <br /><br /><p>Every once in a while, a sour economy apparently produces some sweet results.<br /><br /> Take the case of the Palo Alto school formerly known as the Mid-Peninsula Jewish Community Day School.<br /><br /> After searching for months for a new home because of last summer's relocation of the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center, the 13-year-old school now has both a new name and address.<br /><br /> Credit for the new address goes in no small measure to the financial downturn. It apparently persuaded property owners to sell their 3.1-acre site at 450 San Antonio Road in Palo Alto to the new Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School.<br /><br /> Up until then, school volunteers had looked without luck at more than 200 different locations. "It was extremely difficult to find anything that worked from an educational standpoint," said David Arfin, past president of the school's board of directors.<br /><br /> He termed the ultimate discovery of the site as "somewhere between serendipitous and beshert [meant to be]."<br /><br /> Come Sept. 2, Gideon Hausner will swing open its doors at the new spot to 88 middle school students. In January, some 270 elementary school pupils will join their older peers when a second building is expected to be completed. Down the road, the school hopes to turn a third building into an auditorium and multi-purpose center for the student body.<br /><br /> "Now we're looking forward to being on one campus again," said Gerry Elgarten, head of school.<br /><br /> During the last school year, Elgarten's school was split into two campuses some 13 miles apart. The elementary school remained at 4000 Terman Drive near the old JCC while the middle school was subletting space from Kehillah Jewish High School in San Jose.<br /><br /> Previously, the Mid-Peninsula middle schoolers had been housed at the JCC on Arastradero Road. But both the JCC and the middle school were forced to move last year when the site was reclaimed for use as a Palo Alto Unified middle school.<br /><br /> "The day school at that point really had to scramble to figure out where we were going to house our middle school," said Arfin.<br /><br /> Once the temporary site in San Jose was found, the school then set about looking for a permanent home for its entire student body.<br /><br /> It wasn't an easy feat. Arfin first learned about the site on San Antonio almost two years ago, but was told by the owners that it was for lease and not for sale. The owners had a change of heart a few months later.<br /><br /> "One day the phone rang," recalled Arfin. "They said, 'Gee, given market conditions, we now would be interested in talking with you about selling the site.' That afternoon we were in their offices."<br /><br /> After almost a year of negotiations, the sale of the $12.5 million property was closed in February. That was followed by a scramble to convert "empty shells" on the land into a school.<br /><br /> "It was nothing but slabs of concrete and a structure around it," said Arfin of the three buildings that will translate into 70,000-square-feet of classrooms and other space for the kindergarten through eighth grade school.<br /><br /> The site also will have a playing field, basketball court, picnic areas and a playground for younger students. The plans also call for the planting of an olive grove on the grounds.<br /><br /> To pay for the land and some $11 million in construction costs, the school last year launched an $18 million fund-raising campaign. So far, the effort has raised a little more than $12 million, enabling the opening of the first two buildings.<br /><br /> This past spring, the school's board of directors ap-proved renaming the school in honor of the late Hausner, the Israeli attorney general who served as the lead prosecutor in the Adolf Eichmann trial.<br /><br /> Hausner, who died in 1990, was a relative of Gary and Laura Lauder, parents who made an undisclosed major gift to the school.<br /><br /> "The school was looking for a name for a number of years," said Arfin. "We wanted a name that more closely identified us with what we stood for. When they offered the name, we were thrilled."<br /><br /> In Hausner, Arfin said, the school has a link to Israel and Jewish history and a powerful figure associated with justice.<br /><br /> Arfin, the father of two sons who attend Hausner, described the negotiations and timing involved in opening the school as tricky and tight.<br /><br /> "It was extremely complex," he said. To help pay for construction work, the school in June sold its 1.5-acre Terman campus to the private Bowman International School. As part of the deal, Hausner will rent back the old school until January, when the elementary students will move into their new site.<br /><br /> "To pull this off in the time frame we had, we needed just an A-plus team," said Arfin, who noted that parents and non-parents alike pitched in with expertise as financial planners, real estate lawyers and architects.<br /><br /> "It was more than a substantial part-time job," said Arfin, who has a fairly substantial fulltime position as chief executive officer of a digital media software start-up called GlooLabs.</p> <p> </p>

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