A banking billionaire is funding a $50 million, all-inclusive community center on the Upper East Side to lure Sephardic Jewish singles and young couples from their home base in Brooklyn.
“It’s an Equinox with culture,” said Rimma Rose, 30, who plans to move from Brooklyn to Manhattan to be closer to the center.
“It will be luxurious. That is the allure of it. And it will be something to drive people from Brooklyn. We don’t have anything like that on that scale.”
The Moises Safra Center — envisioned as a Jewish version of the Harvard or Harmony Club — is to break ground in June on East 82nd Street at Lexington Avenue and open in 2014.
The glass-front, 65,000-square-foot building will boast a spa, a salon, a wellness center, a kosher cafe, culinary classes, exercise and rec rooms, day care, a two-level banquet hall with a heated outdoor terrace, skyline views and a “glamour pool” — all from architect Platt Byard Dovell White, designer of Equinox clubs, Chanel stores, the New-York Historical Society and the Gracie Mansion conservancy.
Executive Director Rebecca Harary estimates that there are 2,000 to 3,000 Sephardic families on the Upper East Side — but quickly adds that membership will be open to all Jews.