Rep. Bobby Rush’s Englewood tech center dream dead, where did $1 million go?

In 2000, in the midst of a bruising but ultimately victorious Democratic primary battle against then-state Sen. Barack Obama, Rep Bobby Rush (D-IL) launched the Rebirth of Englewood Community Development Corp. Funded with a $1 million grant from telecommunications giant SBC and the promise of another $175,000 from Congress, the not-for-profit agency’s aim was to help revive the violence-plagued South Side neighborhood, Rep Rush said. A key element of that, Rep Rush and SBC said, would be the creation of the Bobby L. Rush Center for Community Technology, which was supposed to teach computer skills to neighborhood residents and serve as a small-business incubator in a community that badly needed one. More than a decade later, though, there’s no technology center. And it’s unclear what happened to the money. The congressman said he doesn’t know exactly where the money went. He said he didn’t run the day-to-day operation and doesn’t have records of how the money was spent. Rep Rush also said that, contrary to the written announcements in 2003 from his office and SBC, the $1 million never was intended for a building but, instead, for programs.