Chabad House at UW-Madison Eyes Expansion, Student Housing as Demand Grows
The Rohr Chabad House at UW-Madison hopes a proposed five-story expansion can help alleviate two persistent space crunches in Downtown Madison: one largely within its own facilities, the other in off-campus student housing stock.
The Chabad House’s first expansion opened in 2018 after a yearslong process that involved demolishing a historic home. Now it’s considering a towering addition to its current building that will overlook Peace Park on Gilman Street, near State Street. The proposed expansion will require the demolition of another aging home next door, which Chabad leadership says has been poorly kept up.
Driving the need for the expansion is an increasing number of Jewish UW-Madison students seeking services at Chabad, especially during weekly Shabbat meals, the High Holidays and Passover. Events often require meals to be served in multiple shifts with additional seating outdoors. For Rosh Hashanah last fall, the start of the Jewish year, Rabbi Mendel Matusof said, registration for two dinners, which each served 300 students, was full days before the event.
“There were probably at least 300, 400, 500 more students who couldn’t come because they probably waited until the last minute,” Matusof said. “(Hosting) two dinners in the same space on the same evening is a logistical nightmare … we definitely need the space, and that’s just in terms of the major events. And then in general, as a community has grown, we need more space.”
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