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Ten years after first exploring how to accommodate its growing membership with a new building, the timing was finally right for Congregation Ahavas Achim to begin the expansion and renovation of its site in Highland Park.

Following a discussion meeting among members June 30, the Orthodox synagogue voted July 8 to go ahead with plans to fill in the unused overhang in its parking lot and extend its building into the adjacent empty lot it owns on South First Avenue.

The new building will include four additional youth classrooms, an expanded lobby and coatroom, a beit midrash (study room) that will increase from 700 to 1,200 square feet, a new 2,300-square-foot multi-purpose room, new women's and single-use bathrooms, and the unification of a main sanctuary that currently consists of both a carpeted shul and a tiled room that used to be divided by a folding wall. When the building is extended, the right half of the now empty lot will serve as a park.

Ahavas Achim has about 250 full member families, up from 200 five years ago, and has usually experienced about 4.5 percent annual growth over the last 15-20 years, Dr. Barry Levinson, the synagogue's president, said. The synagogue's current building is 15,785 square feet, and after expansion will be 23,437 square feet, according to Dr. Elliot Frank, chairman of the Building Committee.

"We had outgrown the building to the point where youth groups were meeting in closets and offices on Shabbat morning," Frank said.

Rabbi Emeritus Ronald Schwarzberg first broached the idea of expansion in 1999 followed by the formation of a building committee in 2003, Frank said.

After Schwarzberg took a position at Yeshiva University in 2004, the shul's rabbinic search process held up building plans for several years until Rabbi Steven Miodownik was hired in 2006. Levinson and Frank both made re-energizing the project a high priority once Miodownik settled in, and Ahavas Achim gained zoning approval from Highland Park in June 2007. The synagogue refined the construction plans until now, when the recession lowered the cost of the project by about $200,000 over the last three months alone due to the availability of cheaper building materials, Miodownik said.

"The recession is a lousy time to raise money but a fantastic time to build," Miodownik said.

Ahavas Achim has already raised about 89 percent of the money for the project, Miodownik said. Frank said that the total cost will be about $1.5 million, and that the synagogue hopes to break ground in the beginning of August, with an anticipated construction time of just under a year.

Constructed in 1989, the synagogue's current building was overcrowded within two years, Miodownik explained. Ahavas Achim strives for a warm and inviting shul whose decorum sets a model for the Highland Park Jewish community, he said.

"This is the kind of problem we want to have, it's a sign of our shul's success," Miodownik said of the need for more space.

Levinson said that he was nervous of a close vote because of how long the project had been on the table, but that the congregation voted overwhelmingly in favor of expansion with only a few members voting against and a few abstaining. During the meetings, with about 50 people at the first session and 150 at the second, some members expressed reservations about taking on more debt as well as growing too large and not maintaining the qualities of a "small, heimish (homey) shul," Miodownik said.

"The economy makes people doubly nervous about taking on a big project," Levinson said. "Everyone always expects overruns [in construction], but I'm cautiously optimistic that we will come in under budget because of the bad economy."

Currently, the back half of the main sanctuary has a lower ceiling than the front half and was formerly used as a Kiddush room. The new sanctuary, however, will be a unified space with six pews as well as enhanced lighting and acoustics.

Ahavas Achim will first construct the building's extension and then re-do the main sanctuary to avoid the need for off-site services, Miodownik said. Once the project is done, synagogue officials expect a more pleasant environment for services and smoother traffic in and out of the main sanctuary.

"We've had a disjointed room and bad acoustics for seven to eight more years than I wanted to have it," Levinson said.

Levinson said that moving forward with construction plans is an important step because the delays caused the synagogue to lose some credibility in recent years. Perhaps now the vote will make people start to believe the project will actually happen, or maybe they will only believe it when they see it, he said.

But what happens when Ahavas Achim outgrows its new building?

"My answer at that point would be to build another shul somewhere else," Levinson said. "There is only so much you can expand internally."