Forest Hills Jewish Center To Sell Building, Relocate: Report

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — Congregants at the historic Forest Hills Jewish Center are in the process of selling their building as of last week after a two-decades long process, according to a report.

The block-long synagogue has been a fixture at 106-06 Queens Boulevard since the late 1940s, but roughly 20 years ago the congregation started to realize that the concert-hall-like building wasn't the right place for intimate services and lacked modern fixtures like elevators and air conditioning, the Jewish Telegraph Agency, or JTA, reported.

"We wanted something new that would be the right size for the congregation and more in line with how we function. The vote was overwhelmingly for the sale," Carl Koerner, chair of the building committee told JTA.

What ensued, however, was a decades-long sale process, including a false start in 2019, before the synagogue was officially put on the market for $50 million about a year ago.

While Koerner told JTA that the building's sale agreement won't be made public until it is approved by the state attorney general, synagogue president Romi Narov told the site that the sale is enough to help the community as it looks to acquire another spot in the neighborhood.

“We will be taken seriously now by potential property owners because they know we now have the money,” she told JTA.

The congregation plans to find another site that is walking distance to their current home, since many members walk to the synagogue on Shabbat and holidays, and that is large enough to house JASA's Selfhelp Community Services, a non-profit that supports Holocaust survivors in North America and currently rents from the synagogue.

Community leaders told JTA that they expect to vacate the building in two-and-a-half years — the upper limit of what the terms of the sale calls for — and won't cease operation during that time.

Once the congregation leaves, Koerner expects that the building will be razed and replaced with a retail and residential tower.

Rabbi Gerald Skolnik, whose been the congregation’s spiritual leader for nearly 40 years, told JTA that the sale is "all for the good."

"I have a deep appreciation of the history of this synagogue, but there comes a time when change is what is called for. The story of the Forest Hills Jewish Center is about its congregation. The building needs to change," he said.

Read the full JTA piece here.