WEST TOWN — After six years and two pop-up sanctuaries, growing nondenominational Christian church The Painted Door is establishing permanent roots in a shuttered golf shop along Grand Avenue in West Town.
On Friday, the City Council's zoning board of appeals board will vote on The Painted Door's dual requests for a special use permit to establish a church at 2219-2229 W. Grand Ave. as well as a variance to lease out a 40-car parking lot belonging to neighboring CPS' Mitchell Elementary School.
In a letter to zoning board chairman Blake Sercye, Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th) said he supports the requests after seeing letters from neighbors who approve of the church, to be located two blocks west of the Grand and Damen avenues intersection in the former Chicago Style Golf.
"With the long-term parking agreement they have arranged with the local school, I don't foresee any parking problems in our ward and the local school will benefit as well," Maldonado told Sercye.
Since November 2012, the Painted Door Church has met inside of Wells High School, 936 N. Ashland Ave., which it relocated to after outgrowing its first pop-up sanctuary in 2010, in the former Mercury Cafe, 1505 W. Chicago Ave., pastor Mark Bergin said Monday.
"We are nondenominational Christian and draw from a lot of traditions, and have members from a lot of backgrounds. We are excited to be able to host the neighborhood a bit more. Being in a high school, it limits what you can do," Bergin said.
Provided the zoning requests are approved, a build-out will add children's classrooms, bathrooms and a main meeting area, and The Painted Door Church will fully move in this spring, Bergin said.
Once open, the church, which started with 40 members and now has about 200, will occupy 5,100 square feet of an approximately 19,000-square-foot building that counts Ames Hardware and an apparel studio as its other tenants.
"The spot on Grand Ave fits within our church budget and is located within walking distance of where my family lives and where our kids go to school. It's also a really beautiful space (lots of natural light from four large skylights), so it's the kind of church home that can be a warm and inviting place for people to engage," Bergin said in an email.
The building was most recently rented by Chicago Style Golf, which closed earlier this year.
"I saw it was for lease and called the landlord, who was open to a church," said Bergin, who moved to Chicago from Seattle in 2009 and lives in Smith Park with his wife and two children.
For the past few months, the new space has functioned as an office and gathering spot for midweek ministry.
"We've used it for an addiction discussion group, a two-day church planning intensive, staff meetings, Community Group leader meetings, many counseling appointments, and to host meetings of area pastors," Bergin wrote on the church's blog.
Bergin said the church's name comes from the Exodus story in the Old Testament, when on the night the Israelites were rescued out of slavery in Egypt, they painted their doorways with the blood of a lamb as a sign of their friendship with God.
"Historically, many churches have painted their doors red to indicate that we enter into friendship with God through the sacrifice of Jesus," Bergin said.
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