Congregation Beth Shalom has received approval from the Overland Park Planning Commission to add a 13,550 square-foot sanctuary to its current location at 14200 Lamar Avenue.
Fundraising for the new sanctuary started in 2019, and despite the pandemic, Beth Shalom garnered more than $13 million from donors and congregants. A groundbreaking for the sanctuary was held in November 2021.
The new sanctuary will be an addition on the northwest side of the current Beth Shalom building. It will be cylindrical and covered with corrugated metal panels, designed to look like an unfurling Torah scroll. Two cylindrical towers will stand more than 50 feet tall, made to look as though the curled parchment of the Torah scroll is rolling inwards.
In an April 2022 Beth Shalom newsletter, Gina Kaiser, chairperson of the congregation’s steering committee, said construction is anticipated to begin in “late summer or early fall,” and completion is estimated for the fall of 2023, “depending on the availability of materials and labor, both of which fluctuate.”
The interior will have wooden accents echoing wooden synagogues in Eastern Europe. Multiple skylights will let natural light in, and the suspended ceiling will slope inward. Beth Shalom’s website says the windows will be “open to the natural views of our native Kansas,” and that the interior will use sustainable resources “which reflect the Jewish values of conservation.”
The new sanctuary will feature a memorial wall with plaques. Each plaque, which congregants can purchase for $500 in honor of a loved one, will be made of bronze and, according to Rabbi David Glickman in Beth Shalom’s May 2022 newsletter, “will ensure that for the life of our congregation, your loved one’s name will be read aloud in synagogue on his or her actual yahrzeit before the kaddish.”
“Memorial plaques preserve the Jewish memory of our loved ones, regardless of the turns that life may take,” Rabbi Glickman wrote, “… [the memorial wall] will have an artistic element which will allow us to place a candle or stone next to the plaque of our loved one.”
Originally, the planned sanctuary had seating for up to 519; the final plans show the balcony seats, pews and central chairs will comprise 600 seats. The previously reported 11,525 square-foot addition has grown to 13,550 square feet. Approximately 3.33 acres of Beth Shalom’s 7.88-acre property will be developed, and a total of 534 parking spaces for the entire complex will be required by city code.
Beth Shalom has lacked a sanctuary for more than a decade since it moved all its functions from 95th Street and Wornall Road to its current location in 2011 (the building had served as the congregation’s preschool, religious school, and administration offices since 2006). Jason Krakow, the congregation’s president, told The Chronicle in July 2021 that the congregation had always planned to build a sanctuary in its Lamar Avenue location.
“In many ways, a sanctuary is what makes a synagogue building a synagogue building,” Krakow said. “We have functioned beautifully as a community, certainly, finding ways to connect and have sacred activities in our existing space. But dedicating a specific place to those kinds of sacred activities is really what we’ve aspired to do.”
The sanctuary’s design was done by architecture firms Preston Scott Cohen, Inc., of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and BNIM of Kansas City, Missouri.
Engineering will be handled by Oregon-based KPFF (structural), Kansas City-based Henderson Engineers (lighting) and Shawnee Mission-based SK Design Group, Inc. (civil). Acoustical design will be by Acentech of Cambridge, and A.L. Huber of Overland Park is the project’s general contractor.