Skokie Assyrian Community Center to transform abandoned pool into long-awaited worship hall

Pews are neatly rowed atop a red carpet that blankets the wooden floor of the Assyrian Community Center’s gymnasium.

Above, basketball hoops connect to the ceiling, folded upward to clear space for a stage and front altar. 

The gymnasium does not host athletic contests, though. Since it was consecrated in 2022, it has served as Mar Sargis Parish’s house of worship.

Gathering in the gym of what used to be the Mayer Kaplan Jewish Community Center, 5050 Church St. in Skokie, was long considered temporary, and after receiving approval from the Skokie Village Board on Feb. 2, the parish will finally relocate into the northeast corner of the Assyrian Community Center by transforming the building’s empty natatorium into a sanctuary with a 1,536-square-foot addition. 

“We call it, in Latin, lex orandi, lex credendi — the law of faith is the law of liturgy. Liturgy is the way how public celebration will do it,” said Father William Toma, the parish priest, explaining why it is significant for the congregation to have a permanent and more church-like interior. 

“So if you’d like to express our faith, we need to express it through our prayers and our connection with God, and so we’d like to have something that is a special space that is connected with the aesthetic, or with the way that it is built according to our tradition,” Toma said. 

Albert Youna, president of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East Diocese’s board, said he anticipates construction of the new worship hall to complete by the fall of 2027.

Relocating Mar Sargis Parish into another part of the Assyrian Community Center’s large, more than 83,000-square-foot building will also free up its gymnasium to be used as intended.

That’s important because the Assyrian Community Center’s youth group has more than 120 members who otherwise must rent gymnasiums elsewhere to meet and play sports, said Lina Eshaya, a board member of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East Diocese. 

The Assyrian Community Center — the largest of its kind Eshaya is aware of in the U.S. — is a hub for the village’s sizable Assyrian population and the members of other nearby Assyrian parishes in Glenview, Chicago and Roselle.

“The community in Skokie is probably the largest Assyrian community in the area, and to have a parish and a community center here — for not only our youth, our young kids who are like grade school kids, but also our elderly and our families that live here — to have a space that they can come to, I think has probably been a dream for a long time,” Eshaya said. 

The Jewish Community Centers of Chicago first bought the 3.7-acre Skokie lot in 1968 and opened the Mayer Kaplan Community Center in 1971, the organization’s website shows.  

The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East Diocese then purchased the building in December 2018, Eshaya said, with the goal of turning the space into a community center and parish by relocating Mar Sargis into the center from its previous building in Chicago. 

Besides its gymnasium and pool, the building houses a theater, classrooms, a fellowship hall and offices. The center hosts regular Sunday services, Assyrian language classes and bible study groups for youth and adults, Eshaya said. The church offers a space for religious wedding and funeral ceremonies.

The remodeling to the building’s natatorium will include a new vestibule, staircase, elevator, mezzanine, sacristy, office, two powder rooms and a small addition to construct an east-facing altar, Village documents show. 

Once complete, the 6,658-square-foot worship space will contain room for 300 parishioners.

In voting in favor of the project on Feb. 2, the Skokie Village Board approved the Assyrian Community Center’s site plan and a special-use permit reaffirming the church’s right to religious assembly in what is a commercially zoned district. 

Eshaya said “everyone is very excited” about Mar Sargis transitioning out of its temporary space, as it is something the community has looked forward to since 2022, and it took time to ensure its plans were in everyone’s favor and by “the letter of the law.”

Moving forward, Eshaya said the Assyrian Community Center may utilize the additional offices and classrooms on its second floor to house the diocese headquarters. But for now, she is just grateful this new chapter of the Skokie center is underway. 

“Overall, we’re just so thankful to the Village of Skokie for working with us through this whole process and we’re really looking forward to continuing a partnership with the village,” Eshaya said. 

“Our people are all here in Skokie and we want a good relationship with the village and the community in Skokie. I think that’s the biggest thing for us.”

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