New Dell Jewish Community Center opens Monday. Here's what we know.

On Monday morning, leaders of the Shalom Austin campus, which opened in 2000, will officially inaugurate one of the first major additions to the complex at 7300 Hart Lane, the new 38,000-square-foot Dell Jewish Community Center.

"This was built to be a town square," said Rabbi Daniel Septimus, CEO of Shalom Austin, which is like a faith village combined with a high-end YMCA. "People will to want to come here and be here."

More building is on the way: a new home for Jewish Family Service, a nonprofit group that provides an array of mental health and support services, and a meditation garden are expected to open on campus in 2024.

History of the Shalom Austin campus

In March 1992, about 500 Austin Jews gathered at Murchison Middle School to talk about the need for a local community center.

In the previous weeks, a group of 13 of them had secured an option on 40 hilltop acres in the Northwest Hills area. The wooded land had been part of the Hart family ranch.

Michael Dell, 27, then a budding Austin computer executive who had attended the Houston Jewish Community Center as a kid, promised to be a major financier of the project.

At the time, demographers estimated that 4,500 Jews lived in Austin.

Today, that number is closer to 30,000 and includes Israeli nationals attracted by the city's tech industry.

What does the new Dell Center look like?

The existing buildings on the campus, which has three temples, a school, a day care center, a gym, a dance studio and gathering spaces, recede somewhat into the wooded tract.

The new center, on the other hand, catches the visitor's eye immediately.

Made of smooth limestone, wide expanses of glass, strips of dark metal and honey-colored wood, it invites one into a towering lobby backed by a grand staircase. Designed by the Beck Group, the welcoming space morphs into a "living room" with couches, armchairs, a small stage and a coffee bar spread over wide, polished concrete slabs.

Down hallways, conference and meeting rooms abound. At all times, one is aware of the outdoors, since tall windows open to a green courtyard, new playgrounds and a rebuilt swimming pool.

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Connections to the nation of Israel, which turns 75 this year, are everywhere: Commemorative art in the J Gallery, the Hebrew alphabet embellished on playground sculptures, an Israeli flag flapping next to U.S. and Texas flags over the courtyard.

Perhaps the subtlest touch: wooden beams over the living room space echo the branches of a holiday "sukkot," a temporary outdoor structure that commemorates the ancestral journey of the Jews in the depths of the desert.

'A multigenerational purpose'

"We call the project ‘Generations,’” Septimus said about the completed center as well as renovations to the existing building and the two coming additions. "We are building it with a multigenerational purpose and a larger capacity, not only for our community, but for the entire community of Austin."

While the façade and main rooms of the center lend the campus a new identity — and give visitors a sense of where to enter the enclosed compound — the back of the building is, in some ways, more impressive.

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Attached to one of the existing structures, it houses a two-story, 11,000-square-foot health center that would be the envy of a private club or a spa. Strength machines line the lower floor, and the second story is dedicated to cardio studios.

Last Thursday, two weeks after the center's soft opening, most of the spaces were packed with health-seekers.

In contrast to the existing facilities, these tall new spaces are open to green vistas and, on a clear day, downtown views.

Tucked upstairs are offices for Shalom Austin's staff of 160 employees, who operate the campus on an $18 million annual budget. For years, many of them were housed in temporary trailers.

Outside, one can find a new aquatic center and well as tennis and pickleball courts.

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation matched $6.25 million of the more than $25 million Shalom Austin Generations capital campaign to aid in its construction.

Making the Dell Center safe and secure

Given concerns about rising antisemitism, including the 2018 shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue and three clustered antisemitic incidents in Austin in 2021, new security measures were designed into the expanded campus. High metal fencing and a series of locked gates and doors now complement the security checkpoint at the campus entrance.

"It's a very concerning trend," Septimus said "We've been convening the community, including the Anti-Defamation League, Congregation Beth Israel, which is off-campus, Texas Hillel and our two summer camps, along with the Secure Community Network and Jewish Federations, to think about how we make sure that our spaces are safe and secure."

The Austin Jewish community has also reached out to other anti-hate groups.

"They are sometimes contentious conversations," Septimus said, "but we have to have the conversations."

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From no center to one of the largest

Many of the Austin Jews who met in 1992 came from cities with long-established Jewish community centers. With the addition of the Dell Center, Austin now hosts a campus that matches and in some ways exceeds those models.

"It's as big as some of the largest JCCs in the country," Septimus said.

In contrast to some private Austin clubs that charge yearly membership fees in the tens of thousands of dollars, membership at Shalom Austin costs $150 a month for a family.

As for the munificent Dell family, they are pleased with the results.

“After relocating to Austin, it was very important to Susan and me to establish a center of Jewish culture and community here," Michael Dell said in a statement. "We wanted to recreate the experiences we both had at the Jewish Community Centers in Dallas and Houston and are grateful to have done that through our work with Shalom Austin."

“Of all the wonderful things we have been lucky enough to be a part of, the Dell Jewish Community Center at Shalom Austin is one that makes us particularly proud because it is home to us and so many others," Susan Dell said in a statement. "This project is aptly titled 'Generations' because it is truly a place for everyone, and one where lifelong memories are made."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Shalom Austin campus home to new Dell Jewish Community Center