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Feb. 1 was the perfect day to break ground for the new Jewish Community Campus on Clarksville Road in West Windsor. The warmish, sunny day meshed well with the excitement of the 200 community members of all ages, officials, and local politicians who together celebrated this new communal project.

The 70,000-square-foot campus will house four agencies: the Jewish Community Center of Princeton Mercer Bucks, the United Jewish Federation of Princeton Mercer Bucks, the Jewish Family and Children's Service, and the Jewish Community Foundation.

"This will be a new Jewish identity for the general community," said Drew Staffenberg, executive director of the Jewish Community Campus Development Council. "Today, our identities are the synagogues, but not everybody at all stages in their lives connects with a synagogue. This is another entry point -- a place for the Jewish community to come together and identify, and a place for people from different organizations to come together."

More than 70 percent of the funds for the new facility are already in hand, and the four largest donors were honored at the groundbreaking event.

Longtime community leader Richard Kohn of Pennington has made the largest gift to the campus to date. Julius Koppleman of Princeton, a leader who died four years ago, also made a large gift, and the federation wing of the new building will be named after him.

A third large donor, Lewis Katz, grew up in Camden and has also helped to fund Jewish Community Centers in Cherry Hill and Margate; the new JCC will be named for his parents, Betty and Milton Katz. A successful lawyer and businessman, Katz "has been helping JCCs around the area because he understands the power, influence, and benefits of having a full-functioning, high-quality JCC," said Staffenberg. "The JCC was there for him when he was growing up in a family that needed that kind of support."

Alan Landis, a friend of Lewis Katz who also lives outside of the Mercer Bucks community, also understands the power of building Jewish community, said Staffenberg. He and his family have donated funds to support the indoor swimming pool.

To fund the remaining 30 percent of the cost of the communal campus, Staffenberg said that in the next six months the council "is looking for multi-year pledges from the community to help make this dream a communal reality."

Local politicians who participated at the groundbreaking included the mayor of West Windsor, Shing-Fu Hsueh; the mayor of East Windsor, Janice Mironov; the deputy mayor of Plainsboro, Neil Lewis; the honorable Brian Hughes, county executive for Mercer County; and all state representatives from District 14, including Senator Bill Baroni, Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein, and Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo.

Howard Cohen, co-president of the Development Council with Ronald Berman, first got involved in this project nearly 10 years ago when he was first vice president of the Jewish Community Center. He described the site as "huge, wide open, with tree lines on all the perimeters. "I can't believe our dream is finally going to happen," he said.

The new campus is 14 minutes from the Scudders Falls Bridge between New Jersey and Pennsylvania on I-95 and maybe a 10-minute drive from the middle of Princeton. "It is going to bring everybody to a central address so we can celebrate in good times and in not so good times," Cohen said.

Staffenberg explained that the campus will also be relatively painless to enlarge as community needs grow. "The walls on the perimeters are being built to take additions, and we have the land to do it," he said.

The first Jewish Community Center in this area was founded in Trenton in 1910, where it stayed for 51 years. Its next stop was in Ewing, where it remained from 1962 to 2006, and Staffenberg is hopeful that on its centennial anniversary in 2010 the new JCC will open in the community campus. It will house a Jewish daycare center; a senior adult lounge and programs; cultural arts; communal events like a Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration; a health and lifestyle facility that includes fitness, a gym, and an indoor pool; a kosher cafe; and meeting rooms.

For Sue Millstein-Weiner, program and summer camp director of the Jewish Community Center, her feelings about the new facility are intertwined with the longstanding association both she and her extended family have had with the JCC. "I have been part of the JCC since 1981," she said. "My parents grew up at the JCC on Stockton Street [in Trenton]." Millstein-Weiner also remembers listening to her uncle talk about playing basketball at the JCC, even as she had a hard time envisioning him as a sportsman.

But Millstein-Weiner's connection is also through the next generation -- her 6-year-old daughter Lara, whose friends are the children of her mother's old camp friends. "I'm excited for my daughter to have what I had," she said, citing the camaraderie among her old friends. "Even though I don't see everybody every day, whenever we get together, we talk about our summer camp experiences, and she's growing up with that."

Millstein-Weiner is waiting eagerly for the new campus. "After being part of the camp forever," she said, "I am looking forward to the new building and the new facilities. It will be great to be starting anew with the same old feelings."