Photograph; Mayor Rahm Emanuel joins over 200 members of the faith-based community to discuss the importance of providing Chicago Public School students with a longer school day and year. Thursday, August 25, 2011 | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times
By Becky Schlikerman And Dan Mihalopoulos | Originally Published at The Chicago Sun Times. Updated January 17, 2014
dt.common.streams.clsMayor Rahm Emanuel with the Rev. Charles Jenkins at US Cellular Field, in August 2011. | Sun-Times library
One of two schools that Des Plaines-based Concept Schools chain hopes to open next school year — at 8522 S. Lafayette Ave. in Chatham — would be the first tenant in a building owned by an arm of the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church.
The Rev. Charles Jenkins, its pastor, touts on his church’s website how he “filled a key role” on Emanuel’s transition team when the mayor was elected in 2011. Jenkins gave the invocation at Emanuel’s swearing-in. He is an Emanuel appointee to the City Colleges of Chicago board and a board member of the private group New Schools for Chicago, which helps fund new charter schools.
If approved, the Concept school would pay nearly $529,000 in rent its first year, with annual lease payments going up to more than $961,000 by the fifth year, according to documents filed by Concept. It said the payments would go to the Fellowship Educational and Economic Development Corp., a not-for-profit headed by Jenkins.
The building on Lafayette Avenue was purchased for $7 million in 2011 by Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., based in Oklahoma City. In August, Hobby Lobby turned over the deed to the property to Jenkins’ church at no cost, property records show. The gift was the “largest donation to an African-American church in American history,” according to documents submitted as part of Concept’s school application.
The building has 75,000 square feet of usable space, all of which would be occupied by the school.