by Valeria González Montero
Maryland Hillel has wanted a new building for a while. It was going to open in 2019 — but didn’t because of lack of construction funding and setbacks with the design.
Now, it says it plans to start construction on its new building in spring 2022 with a goal of opening in fall 2023.
After an initial delay in 2019, the construction was expected to begin in 2021, but it was once again delayed.
“The delay is mostly due to COVID,” said Shawn Laing, director of finance and operations at Maryland Hillel, an organization for Jewish students on campus. “Things weren’t running as they normally would. And neither was development.”
Laing expects that the development will continue without setbacks this time.
“Hopefully now that things with COVID are kind of in the past mostly, we’ll be able to move quickly and get back to where we want to be so that we’re ready to open in the fall of 2023, move in summer 2023,” he said.
The new building will be located at 7505 Yale Ave, a 15-minute walk away from Hillel’s current location on Mowatt Lane.
“The land we are building on is also the site of the original Hillel facility at UMD,” Laing said. “We’re taking everything and expanding it.”
There will be a café, a dining hall, multi-purpose rooms, dedicated spaces for the different religious services and maybe a yoga studio if all goes as planned, Laing said. The building will be a bit bigger than the current one — its square footage will increase to 30,000 square feet, Laing said.
Dani Schwartz, a freshman psychology major at the University of Maryland, said the new building will be amazing.
“I think it puts a big point of the Jewish community here on campus,” she said. “Having a bigger building with more room accessible to different types of Judaism, it’s obviously more beneficial to having a smaller building.”
There are 6,500 Jewish students on UMD’s campus and more than 25 Jewish student groups affiliated with Maryland Hillel, according to Hillel’s website.
Aviel Taube, a freshmen letters and sciences student, agrees that a new building is necessary.
“It’s good because the Jewish community is getting really big at Maryland. I think they’ve been needing a bigger facility for a long time,” Taube said. “It’s definitely necessary because the facility that is now, it’s nice but it’s almost small for the amount of people.”
The Maryland Hillel is still fundraising for the construction. By March 2020 they had raised $12 million. They have a countdown on their campaign website that displays the days left until the deadline of raising $20 million and the progress to date. As of today, there are 82 days left on the countdown.
Laing emphasized how great a partner the university has been during the process and said that more details about the construction, the team and the architect will be revealed after details are finalized.
“I feel like it’s making UMD more like a whole new place and more of a hopeful place for the future. It could be potentially also an attraction for more people to come, because it will be a more modern, bigger building that accommodates for a lot of more people’s needs,” said Schwartz.
Featured image: Maryland Hillel’s current location at 7612 Mowatt Lane. Photo by Valeria González Montero.