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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/27584/full/27584/koret-taube-jointly-award-palo-alto-campus-15-million/ <br /><br /> <b>Koret, Taube jointly award Palo Alto campus $15 million</b> <br /> Friday, November 4, 2005 | by <p>joe eskenazi </p> <br /><br /><p>When soliciting a lead gift for a building project, one can do worse than coming away with what is one of the largest ever bestowed upon a local Jewish endeavor.<br /><br /> That’s the happy situation for Palo Alto’s Campus for Jewish Life, the recipient of a $15 million combined grant comprised of a $7.5 million donation from the Koret Foundation and the same amount from the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture. <br /><br /> “We’ve gone from a handful of volunteers trying to do what many people said was impossible, to having a major foundation behind us, and that’s mind-boggling,” gushed Shelley Hebert, the campus’ executive director. <br /><br /> “All the worrying, the agonizing, the hand-wringing — the things the Jewish community does so well — it’s paying off.” <br /><br /> In droves, it would seem. <br /><br /> Tad Taube, Koret’s president, said the huge grant wasn’t meant to make a statement but simply to fill the coffers of a project he feels is vital to Jewish life in the South Peninsula and beyond. <br /><br /> “Jewish institutional life outside of the city has been, I would say, anemic at best in terms of facilities,” he said. <br /><br /> “It’s been felt for a long time by the leadership here in the South and mid-Peninsula that we needed a focal point for the Jewish community. I think people here, including myself, are very excited about the possibilities.” <br /><br /> In fact, noted Carol Saal, the campus’ vice president and fund-raising chair, Koret and Taube have been involved from square one. It was a Koret grant that helped buy the property for the campus, which will serve as the future home of the Palo Alto JCC, a Jewish Home for seniors and other Jewish organizations. <br /><br /> And the negotiations between Koret and the campus have been a lengthy procedure — as Taube put it, “we didn’t wake up one morning and decide to plink down a lot of money in the mid-Peninsula.” <br /><br /> But Saal’s timing was fortuitous. In <br /><br /> the midst of the process, the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s population study was released, quantifying the huge influx of Jews into the south Peninsula. <br /><br /> “That demographics study came in the nick of time to help us push this over the top,” she said. <br /><br /> The $7.5 million grant is Koret’s largest ever in the Jewish community. Combined with the matching $7.5 million from Taube’s family foundation, it becomes the largest ever given in one gift to a Bay Area Jewish project. <br /><br /> Koret has previously given the JCC of San Francisco a $6.2 million capital grant and a $3 million programming grant, a $2 million capital grant to the Foster City JCC and an $800,000 gift to the JCC in Los Gatos.<br /><br /> Jeff Farber, Koret’s executive director, says he hopes the campus — now to be named the Taube-Koret Campus — will be as much of a community focal point as the Osher Marin JCC, which is located on the Lanee C. Hoyt campus in San Rafael. Koret helped fund that project, too. <br /><br /> The budget for the campus is estimated at more than $200 million. Taube said he hopes his gift, and Koret’s, shake the tree for potential donors. <br /><br /> “By no means can I say at this point we have identified all funding sources,” he said. “I do feel the Taube-Koret gifts certainly set an example, and other large philanthropists can join with us to complete the work we need to do to make this a huge success.” </p> <p> </p>

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