On Sunday, August 30, 2026, I was up at Camp Hess Kramer for a 75th Anniversary Tree Planting. This was the first time I had been on camp grounds since the 2018 Woolsey Fire; that fire destroyed 90% or more of Camp Hess Kramer and its sibling camp, Gindling Hilltop Camp. While walking around camp after the song session, I was talking to Aaron Wolf, Rabbi Wolf’s grandson, about a documentary he was working on regarding the camps and their rebirth. I suggested that he needed to include the pre-history of the camp; that is, what was on the land before Wilshire Blvd Temple purchased the property.
During the week since the planting, camp has been on my mind: both the future and the past.
The Future
The fire, and the subsequent rework of the camp facilities, will be erasing most of the traces of the past from the landscape. Almost all buildings that survived at CHK will be completely remodeled (both the Irmas Dining Hall, which dates to the late 1980s or 1990s, and the staff housing (now called “The Browns”), which dates to the late 1950s, have been taken down to studs. The new conference center and housing that replaced the old Sages building survived and appears to be one of the few survivors that isn’t being reworked. The concrete amphitheatre survived and isn’t changing.
During the event, they posted a map of the future camp. I did a Facebook post where I posted more pictures, including closer detail of the map. To summarize what is being done:
Camp is being rebuilt in three phases, for loads of reasons (including the fact that it took them 5 years to get the entitlements to rebuild with all the agencies involved, and the state funding for rebuilding were about to expire). Phase 1A is rebuilding lower CHK, pretty much up to the pool area. This allows them to reopen the camp for retreats and usages year round, but not for summer camp. They are also demolishing the old staff housing and infirmary (the infirmary is moving to the new Welcome Center, which will be schlep), and building a new “Gildred” hall that will have a new dining room, offices, and meeting spaces. Irmas, the old dining hall, will become another program space with staff housing below. [you can figure this all out if you wade through the planning blueprints linked below]. There will also be the aforementioned Welcome Center at the new entrance to camp, as well as a Fine Arts building with 3 “classrooms” (program spaces for arts). It looks like there will also be a teaching kitchen in the old “small games” area, and a climbing wall near the dance platform.
Phase 1B completes the rebuild of middle CHK and allows opening as a summer camp. It includes two cabin groups. One in the area where the girls cabins were, which are mostly two story cabins centered around plazas for interaction. There may be a second phase where the “boys” area is built out with cabins (I need to look at the plans to see if they are one or two story), as well as the platform tents. There will also be staff housing near Scouts Grove; unclear which cabin phase that is in.
Phase 2, which is much much farther in the future, will reopen Hilltop. From the planning documents, the layout of Hilltop is essentially the same, although the pavilion would be rectangular.
The Phase 1A camp should reopen in 2027. Phase 1B is a few years further off, and requires a LOT of funding*, and regrowth of the summer program which lost campers during the pandemic years. Phase 2 is even further off. Note that Phase 1B might have two subphases with different timelines for expansion of the cabin area.
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*: This is where I should put the funding plug: They are not at the point where they are looking for capital donations for Phase 1A yet. That will come. Right now, they need operational funding: To rebuild the full camp requires restoring the financial foundation of the camps, which is hard when you are renting a facility. This means that currently, they run a deficit, supported by Wilshire’s endowments. They need operational funding to support the current camp. See their giving page for more information.
The rework of the camp will drastically rethink the camp flow. The Tennis Courts next to PCH will become a parking structure to keep vehicles out of the heart of camp, with tennis courts on the top. The former caretakers house space will become a welcome center, next to a new Fine Arts center. There will be a new multipurpose building where Gildred Hall was. As I mentioned, the Browns will be a new “Gildred Dining Hall”. Baruh will be replaced by a pool building and a gymnasium (seemingly still called Baruh), separated by a plaza so that the amphitheatre looks into open space. In Phase 2, the cabin area will be centered around 2-story cabins mostly in the old girls cabin area, facing central plaza to build communities from groups of cabins. I found a page from the architects that shows pictures of the new conception. I also found the architects from an earlier iteration, which included a map of that earlier iteration. That earlier map is interesting, because although supposedly post-fire, it shows many of the buildings that were destroyed in the fire, including Baruh and the full cabin areas. But it also shows a drastic working of todays “The Browns”, as well as additional facilities across Yerba Buena Road.
Basically, the point here is that camp evolves. The camp from the era when I attended (1969-1979) is drastically different than the original camp from the 1950s and early 1960s. What camp became in the 1990s and 2000s was drastically different than my era. Camp in the “combined wandering camp” era is different than the in-Malibu era. Camps when Malibu reopens will be different, and will establish its own traditions. Camp changes.
