The interior of the rotunda of the former B’Nai Israel synagogue on the border of Garfield and East Liberty. The BGC recently was awarded a grant to help turn the empty facility into a community space and arts venue.

By Joe Reuben, Bulletin Contributor
A project started five years ago to restore a vacant synagogue in the 300 block of N. Negley Avenue got a major boost in March with the awarding of a $675,000 grant by the Allegheny Foundation.
“This is the investment we’ve been looking for that has proved hard to secure,” said Jarmele Fairclaugh, board president for the Bloomfield-Garfield Corporation.
The community organization purchased the former B’Nai Israel synagogue on the border between Garfield and East Liberty in December with the intention of converting it into a community-owned and managed arts, events, and education center for the greater East End.
“While we’ve gotten support from a number of private donors and smaller foundations, this gift was critical in helping us draw down state funding that has been pledged to the project on a preliminary basis,” Fairclaugh went on to say recently. “Now we can begin working aggressively to get those state dollars committed to what we hope will be the first of major improvements to the building later this year.”
Fairclaugh said the iconic rotunda structure, which closed for good in 1995, currently lacks electrical, plumbing, heating, and elevator systems. In 2020, the BGC was approached by two individuals, Sara Mayo and Alyson Bonavoglia, who, Fairclaugh said, “had it in their hearts” to see the synagogue restored as a home to the arts and a range of other public and private events and programming.
With the help of a $250,000 grant from the McCune Foundation in 2023, the BGC was able to embark on an intensive planning and fund-raising effort for the project that is only now starting to yield results, Fairclaugh said.
“If Sara and Alyson don’t come knocking on our door, it’s a good bet we’re not involved in this project today. And it helped greatly during these past five years that we had a building owner in Beacon Communities who was willing to give us the time and even some resources to make this vision come to life,” Fairclaugh observed. “There were moments when our staff and board of directors thought this was going to be too steep of a hill for us to climb. And believe me, we still have a long way to go.”
She said the plan is to make it a building that serves the residents of seven different neighborhoods.
With the grant from the Allegheny Foundation, the BGC will now be able to work with the city’s Urban Redevelopment Authority to piece together what could be the first phase of $3 million in renovations to the building, with a target date of Nov. 1 to start. A $1 million award came down from the state’ s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program last year to the U.R.A. for the project, along with a second grant for $250,000 through its Local Share Account Program. There is a catch, however, to the RACP grant: it must be matched dollar-for-dollar with funding from non-state sources.
“That’s why the foundation grant was so critical,” Fairclaugh maintained. “Without it, we’re really straining to try to reach that goal.”
She said the BGC will need to meet with neighboring residents by late spring because the question of where visitors to the building will be able to park still needs to be resolved. Rothschild-Doyno Collaborative is overseeing the design and engineering work for the first phase, and it’s anticipated that Jendoco Construction will be serving as the general contractor.
Fairclaugh said the BGC has a “reveal” event planned for the evening of May 15 so that the public can come and view the rotunda in its raw form. Tickets are available through EventBrite as well as from the BGC’s fund-raising manager, Nina Gibbs (Nina@bloomfield-garfield.org). Fairclaugh said there will be food and entertainment, and two prominent individuals, State Sen. Jay Costa and Robert Jones Jr. of Brothers and Sisters Emerging, Inc., will be honored that evening for their contributions to the betterment of the Garfield and greater East End community.