Enrollment has officially opened for Davis School, a planned private Jewish high school set to take over a long-stalled skyscraper at 355 East Wacker Drive in Chicago's Lakeshore East neighborhood. The school team is accepting its first class for a fall 2027 opening, and more than 700 families have already expressed interest, with early enrollment and campus tours now available.
The project marks the revival of a building whose construction has had a rocky history. According to Chicago YIMBY, the structure was originally being built as the GEMS Academy high school, but construction paused in 2019 amid the developer's financial troubles before resuming in 2025. The outlet reports the Davis School team purchased the property for $17.5 million last year, with completion expected to cost around $20 million.
Newly released renderings show updated plans for the building, which the same report describes as a private Jewish high school spanning the entirety of a 13-story structure expected to accommodate over 1,200 students. That figure sits in contrast to a separate estimate from ABC7 Chicago, which has reported the school is intended to serve an estimated 400 to 600 students. Other outlets have also described the building differently: JUF describes a 154,000-square-foot, seven-story building, while The Real Deal has put the figure at 155,000 square feet across a different story count. The discrepancies between these accounts remain unresolved.
What's Planned Inside the Tower
Per the same Chicago YIMBY report, the completed campus is expected to include a full-size theater, a large indoor gym with a sport court, a cafeteria, specialized labs, classrooms, a rooftop deck and vehicle parking. The building's exterior color palette has also shifted from blue to white in the latest designs, the outlet notes.
JUF's reporting adds further detail to the picture, describing rooftop athletic facilities, a two-story library and a fully kosher campus with separate meat and dairy kitchens. That same JUF coverage refers to a 500-seat professional-grade theater in its article text, though a photo caption in the piece identifies the venue as a 535-seat theater — another detail the available reporting does not reconcile.
A Long Road From Foundation to Classroom
The building's footprint traces back years before Davis School entered the picture. A 2015 foundation-only permit for the original GEMS Academy project, detailed by Chicago Construction News, described a 13-story grade 5-12 school with a green roof and carried a permit value of $11 million. The Real Deal has separately reported that the original design for the site was meant to accommodate about 1,400 students, with a 550-seat auditorium, lab spaces, classrooms and a rooftop terrace featuring sport courts and a gymnasium.
Davis School has been described by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as the only non-Orthodox Jewish high school within Chicago city limits, a distinction that places it in a broader pattern of growth playing out across the country.
Part of a Broader Enrollment Trend
Nationally, Jewish day school enrollment has been climbing. The same news organization reports that Prizmah's network of 305 North American Jewish day schools saw enrollment rise from 94,008 students in the 2021-2022 school year to approximately 101,041 in 2025-2026, a 7.5 percent increase. Non-Orthodox school enrollment grew 3 percent from 2021 to 2024, compared with a 7 percent increase at Orthodox schools over the same stretch, according to that reporting.
Closer to home, Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Skokie saw its own enrollment climb from 214 students in 2021 to 254 the following year cited in the report, an increase of just under 20 percent. The average Jewish day school tuition for the most recent school year referenced was over $23,000, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted.
For now, families eyeing Davis School for fall 2027 can take campus tours and begin the enrollment process while construction continues at 355 East Wacker Drive. Final details on the building's size, capacity and completion timeline may still shift as the project moves forward.
