S. Petersburg Chabad Opens $11 Million Home After Two Decades of Shlichus
After years of operating from makeshift spaces, Rabbi Alter and Chaya Korf have opened an $11 million, 18,000-square-foot Chabad Center for Jewish Life in S. Petersburg, Florida, marking a major milestone in more than two decades of shlichus • Full Story
The new building has no name on it yet. It was built by thousands of gifts from across the community, ranging from donations of $500,000 to a young girl’s saved-up allowance of $100.
The shlichus began in 2002, when Rabbi Alter and Chaya Korf arrived in S. Petersburg and opened their Dartmouth Avenue stilt home, which would creak and tremble when crowds filled it for Shabbos meals. As the community grew, Chabad moved to a storefront on Central Avenue, and then to three attached trailers on Park Street.
Longtime member Alice Ettinger recalled her first visit there: she walked in to find “a trailer with chairs,” and walked out having found a community.
In 2019, the Korfs purchased a half-acre lot downtown and announced plans for a permanent home. Then COVID arrived, snarling supply chains and sending costs soaring well past the original $5 million estimate. In April 2023, some 300 people gathered for the groundbreaking.
Three and a half years later, on October 25, 400 guests joined Chabad of S. Petersburg to cut the ribbon on its new home, and heard its story told through the people who lived it.
Avi Kohan and Max Baker, who grew up in S. Pete, remembered Shabbos meals at the Korfs’ home, summers at Camp Gan Israel and bar mitzvah lessons with Rabbi Korf. “The experiences don’t end when you leave the building,” Kohan, today a schoolteacher, said. “You carry them home, and they stay with you.”
Ettinger spoke of the years Chabad supported her and her husband, Larry, including through his stroke and recovery. “We have no family here, and Chabad became our family,” she said.
Visitors entering the new building are greeted by a warm, living-room-style lobby with couches and a rug. Beyond it is a study with a long conference table, where Torah classes are held nearly every day, while large classrooms fill most of the first floor’s educational wing.
A glass staircase, designed to create the effect of “walking up into the sky,” leads to the second-floor community wing, where a sunlit atrium opens into the sanctuary. At the ribbon-cutting event, guests had dinner in the adjacent ballroom and then went up to the rooftop deck for dessert.
Since moving in, Chabad has added a preschool-age Hebrew school class and The Chosen Joe, a Sunday morning tefillah service with breakfast.
“Today we are celebrating the completion of a building,” Rabbi Korf said at the ribbon-cutting. “But in so many ways, we’re just getting started.”
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