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JEM to Buy Shuttered School on Kingston Ave.

The owners of a long-shuttered Kingston Avenue school building have reportedly signed a contract to sell the property for approximately $3,000,000. The buyer is reported to be Jewish Educational Media, who may be planning to open a museum dedicated to the Rebbe.

Shmais.com reports that JEM entered into contract to purchase the 3-story, 9,000 square foot building for close to $3,000,000.

The building, located at 275 Kingston Avenue, sits on the corner of Lincoln Place, just one block from 770 Eastern Parkway. It was home to the Magic Kingdom Nursery and Arista Prep School up to its closing a number of years ago.

Shmais quotes sources as saying that “there is a plan on the table to open a small museum on the Rebbe on site.”

This would be the second property that JEM is purchasing on the block. Back in 2011, they purchased 287 Kingston Avenue for $435,000. The building sits mostly gutted, with construction fencing and scaffolding surrounding the front of the property.

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17 Comments

  • Citizen Berel

    What? A museum dedicated to the Rebbe! The Rebbe needs a museum. There’s no better way to purpose the building in service of the Rebbe’s inyonim? Open a Heichal Menachem, something. Anything.

    Thought experiment, yud shvat, 1975, chassidim makes duch to Rebbe asking for a brocha to build a museum dedicated to the Freideker Rebbe. I can’t fathom what the Rebbe would respond, but I wouldn’t dare present such an idea.

    • Agreed

      How about a rec center for youth so they aren’t hanging out by Chocolatte? I would think helping our own is a priority right now.

  • maybe, just maybe

    JEM would be so kind to clear up that other property, instead of it being an eye sore, and forgo on wasting more money on another building…

  • The Reshonim

    How could it b closed I live on Lincoln & Albany & would always walk by there goin 2 770 I would c children coming out of school there everyday during the year so y do u say that its closed ? If children r still goin 2 school there ?

    • Little Flowers

      Right now the building is being used by “Little Flowers” for daycare/school. Definitely not shuttered.

  • Ezra

    Museums are for things that are dead or no longer exist; thus the Nazis, yimach shemam, planned to open a “museum of the extinct Jewish race.”

    Why should a Lubavitcher organization – who, one hopes, are זרעו בחיים and therefore know that הוא בחיים – want or need a “museum dedicated to the Rebbe” rather than something living and breathing?

    • Milhouse

      Museums are for things that are dead or no longer exist

      That’s a ridiculous statement. Do children no longer exist? Or Jewish children, or modern art? Is natural history dead, or perhaps air and space, design, or arts and industries?

    • Ezra

      Milhouse, do they display children in a children’s museum? Come on.

      And yes, the stuff at a natural history museum, or an air and space museum, etc., is indeed dead – they are samples that are no longer alive or no longer in active use. But the Rebbe and his teachings don’t need to be relegated to a museum; better that the money, and the location, should be used for perpetuating the Rebbe’s work rather than memorializing it.

  • An Old Time Crown Heghter

    This building was once called the Bnei Jacob hall, the kinus Tzach on chol hamoed succos was there, so where wedding of several members of Anash (on 2 separate floors) so the the Rebbe can be Mesader Kidushin.

    • Across The Street

      And Rebbetzin Chana, the Rebbe’s mother, lived in an apartment right across the street above the Basil Restaurant, in the years before she moved to 1414 President Street.

  • $3 million

    Where does JEM get that kinda $$ from? I thought they are always saying they’re flat broke.

  • just a fact

    to citizen ezra and berel or whoever…

    Get a life guys – like really!

  • nice to hear some

    Moisdois have money. Living Torah app must br doing well.

  • listen jem

    we dont need a museum. we need a good scholl for our boys that when they come out after 12 years they know how to read and write and speak, and many things that our boy schools are missing. thats what the rebbe wants.