AJU Finalizes Campus Sale to Milken Community School

On Feb. 20, American Jewish University’s (AJU) finalized the sale of its Familian Campus, marking an official transfer of ownership of the 22-acre campus to Milken Community School, a private Jewish high school and middle school located nearby.

The completion of the sale comes more than two years after AJU first listed the hilltop property, at 15600 Mulholland Drive, on the market.

“Today marks a significant milestone as American Jewish University and Milken Community School take a major step to strengthen our Jewish community for future generations,” Milken Head of School Sarah Shulkind and AJU President Jeffrey Herbst said in a joint statement.

Uncertainty over the future of the property dates back to June 2023, when a $65 million sale agreement between AJU and an international education corporation fell through, with the buyer citing opposition from the property’s would-be neighbors as its reason for backing out of the purchase.

Shortly thereafter, Milken—which was a finalist in the June 2023 sale—re-emerged as an interested buyer. In Dec. 2023, the school announced it had entered into an agreement with AJU to purchase the property.

As previously reported in the Journal, AJU chose Milken over Chabad of California. Asked during a Feb. 21 Zoom interview about AJU’s decision to go with Milken over Chabad, AJU President Jeffrey Herbst told the Journal that “Milken made the most compelling offer.”

AJU’s historic sale to Milken serves the needs of both parties: it allows AJU to dedicate more funds to its diverse educational offerings, including digital programs that gained popularity during the pandemic, while easing some of its financial burden, and it gives Milken, which has seen considerable enrollment growth in recent years, the ability to expand its capacity.

The purchase triples the size of Milken, which is currently operating on 6.5 acres on Mulholland Drive.

The sale’s terms allow Milken to lease back part of the campus to AJU operations. Over the next three to five years, AJU will continue housing its administrative offices on the Familian campus, and it will continue operating the site’s community mikvah, which is said to be the only pluralistic mikvah in the Pacific Southwest.

“We’re continuing to discuss [with Milken] how we can not only have a landlord-tenant relationship but an academic-intellectual partnership,” Herbst said in the interview.

“We’re happy to be sharing the facility,” Shulkind said in a separate interview. “We have so many overlapping professionals and lay leaders it feels like we’re sharing the property with a communal partner.”

Shulkind added: “This is about the Jewish community coming together, investing in the future of our children. To me the story is about the power of imagination shaping the future, the story of a thriving Jewish organization when the Jewish people and continuity is not at all a given.”

Meanwhile, AJU will continue operating its Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, which is home to many AJU programs. Over the next two months, Herbst said, AJU will be “reallocating a significant portion of the [120,000-volume] library to the Brandeis-Bardin Campus.”

AJU’s previously announced relocation of its Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies to the Beverly Hills area—a neighborhood where much of its students and faculty are based—will proceed as planned.

As for Milken, the school’s students will begin having access to some of its newly acquired campus’ resources, including its performing arts spaces, athletic facilities and parking lot, this spring.

Currently, the school is in the early stages of a capital campaign to build the property into a “transformative campus,” Shulkind said, though further details about the school’s plans for the property were not immediately available.

In their statement, Herbst and Shulkind characterized the completion of the sale as an important moment for the Los Angeles Jewish community.

“The collaboration between AJU and Milken is a testament to the collective leadership and vision of both institutions’ boards—and a shared commitment to invest in the future of Jewish Los Angeles,” they said. “We hope that this collaboration will bring strength to both institutions and the next generation of Jews in Los Angeles and beyond.”