He sold a house to Justin Bieber. Now this LA investor has given Chabad $100 million to build one of the world’s largest Jewish centres.

JTA – A Los Angeles real estate investor known for selling homes to celebrities has donated a $100 million (R1.6 trillion) office tower to Chabad, the global Orthodox Jewish outreach movement, to create what is slated to become one the world’s largest Jewish centres. 

Alon Abady and his wife, Monique, transferred the 16-story, 300 000-square-foot (27 870m2) complex at 9911 W Pico Blvd to Chabad of California, which plans to transform it into the Chabad Campus for Jewish Life. 

The property sits in the Pico-Robertson neighbourhood, the heart of Jewish Los Angeles, down the street from the Museum of Tolerance and near the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Fox Studios and, since 2023, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, a Conservative movement seminary. 

Chabad officials say the building was appraised last autumn at $103 million, making it one of the largest single gifts ever to a Jewish organisation. The new campus is expected to serve as a regional hub for Jewish religious life, social services, and education, as well as a global centre for the Lubavitch movement’s worldwide network of emissaries. 

The campus will include a synagogue, life-cycle venues, youth and senior programmes, mental health and social services, museums and support for Jewish students on college campuses, along with facilities for large communal and international gatherings. 

“It will be an epicentre of Jewish life,” said Rabbi Chaim Nochum Cunin, one of the leaders of West Coast Chabad. “It will transform the landscape of Jewish life in Los Angeles and throughout the world.” 

Abady, who works as a managing partner of Waterfall Bridge Capital, paid $35 million for the property in 2023 with plans to redevelop it. The current market value of $103 million reflects an appraisal by Partner Valuation Advisors conducted in September, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, the director of public relations for Chabad’s headquarters in Brooklyn. 

Abady is best known for high-profile real estate deals in Los Angeles, including the $96 million purchase of the Sofitel Beverly Hills hotel in 2021. He has also been involved in a series of widely noted residential transactions, including buying and later selling Simon Cowell’s former Beverly Hills home and selling a property to Justin and Hailey Bieber. 

The campus will rank among the largest Jewish institutions in the world. It will be smaller than Chabad’s 538 000-square-foot Menorah Centre in Dnipro, Ukraine, but larger than most Jewish community centres in North America and comparable in scale to New York’s 92nd Street Y, which also includes residential and non-Jewish cultural facilities. 

Abady said his gift reflects a long-standing relationship with Chabad that dates back to his family’s arrival in Los Angeles in the 1970s, when they were assisted by Rabbi Baruch Shlomo Cunin, Chabad’s West Coast director. 

“This is a lifelong dream that also allows me to honour my parents and my children,” Abady said. “When my family immigrated to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Chabad was there for us. That was never forgotten.” 

The announcement comes at a moment when many Jewish institutions are under financial strain. In Los Angeles, it follows the recent sale of the American Jewish University’s (AJU’s) historic Bel Air campus. The 22-acre hilltop property was transferred in 2024 to Milken Community School, its neighbouring Jewish middle and high school, and AJU’s rabbinical school, Ziegler, moved to Pico-Robertson. 

Though the final purchase price was not publicly disclosed, the sale was widely reported to be in the roughly $60 million range, allowing Milken to expand its campus as AJU consolidated its operations.