Allan Appel Photo
The Board of Zoning Appeals Tuesday night granted permission for this little brick building on Lynwood Place to become the new student center of the Chabad Lubavitch movement for the Yale community.
In a unanimous vote, the zoners agreed to allow renovations to proceed to convert the former Palmer House at 36 Lynwood into an 8,500 square foot center for the activities of the Orthodox Jewish movement whose main aim is to bring into the Jewish fold secular and generally non-affiliated Jews.
The current Chabad student center is in a cramped building on Edgewood Avenue.
In a recent survey sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, an increase in the area’s population of Jews of the Orthodox persuasion was attributed to the activities of Chabad.
The zoners allowed the plan to go forward permitting larger lot coverage, smaller side yard, and fewer parking spots than code requires.
A Yale alum recently donated $1 million gift toward the $6 million renovation project. (Click here for Mary O’Leary’s Register story about that.)
If all goes according to plan, the center should open in 2012.
