Harford Chabad's new home at 38 East Broadway has been named the Town of Bel Air's 2026 Archer-Bull Award recipient, the town's top honor for architectural and design excellence. The synagogue's new center opened in the summer of 2025 after a construction budget that started at $600,000 and ballooned to $3 million once the project grew from a renovation into a full rebuild.
A Design Built to Fit the Block
The Town of Bel Air's Economic and Community Development Commission presents the Archer-Bull Award annually for architectural and design excellence, according to the Town of Bel Air. In naming Harford Chabad this year's winner, the commission praised how the building fits into its surroundings, writing that “the thoughtful massing, setbacks, colors, and scale allow the building to complement its neighbors without copying a particular architectural style.” The building was designed by Frederick Ward Associates and built by iMark Builders, per the same source.
Rabbi Kushi Schusterman said Frederick Ward Associates was chosen in part for its ability to balance synagogue design with a structure that still feels homier, according to reporting by Baltimore Jewish Times. The finished building includes a social hall, a mikvah, an expanded library, a kitchen, classrooms, and additional gathering space, the outlet reports. Congregant Tobias Musser told the publication that the new library is much larger than the one it replaced.
From a $600,000 Fix-Up to a $3 Million Build
What began as an estimated $600,000 renovation turned into a $3 million building project once the decision was made to remove the existing structure entirely, according to Chabad.org. Ground broke before the High Holidays in 2024, and the center opened on June 29, 2025, with more than 300 people attending the opening, per the same report. A 2025 report from Baltimore Jewish Times offered different figures around that time, stating the community needed to raise around $3 million for the center, had raised around $1.4 million, and still had $2.3 million to go — numbers that don't fully reconcile with the $3 million total project cost cited elsewhere, so they are presented here as reported rather than resolved. Baltimore Jewish Times also reports that project financing is not yet complete. Chabad.org states the center received the 28th annual Archer-Bull Award in October.
A Congregation That Outgrew Its Old Space
Harford Chabad was founded a little more than half a decade before this reporting, according to Baltimore Jewish Times. Rabbi Schusterman moved to the Baltimore suburb in 2010 and began engaging local Jewish residents, laying groundwork for the congregation years before its new building went up. He told the outlet that the new building is already being filled and that programming has grown alongside it.
The center now hosts weekly mahjong, services, Torah study, social events, and gatherings, and it sends out program guides every quarter, per Baltimore Jewish Times. Musser, one of the congregants quoted in the report, said he returned to Judaism and began attending services every Saturday.
The Archer-Bull Award has a long history in Bel Air; earlier presentations were reported in both 2023 and 2024, including by the Capital Gazette in 2023. The Town of Bel Air identifies 331 Baltimore Pike as the 2023 recipient and Harford Retirement Planners as the 2024 recipient. For a congregation that started small and spent years building toward this moment, the 2026 win adds a civic honor to a project that was, by its own early budget estimates, never supposed to cost this much.
