It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since then Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sent bulldozers under the cover of darkness to carve large Xs into Meigs Field’s only runway. In a retrospective piece from the Chicago Sun-Times, reporters note that the mastermind behind the scheme has moved to rural North Carolina to raise goats and make cheese, while the boss who ordered it is now a retired mayor with a lucrative career in the private sector.
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The sad thing is how little Daly and Chicago were fined by the FAA. What a joke……even more criminal!!!
And..at the very least, Daley could have allowed plenty of acreage for a decent sized heliport for heli-taxi’s to operate to downtown Chicago, even if it was that important to develop the remaining acreage for whatever and that’s not happening….what a waste…
..and that would include space for fuel and maintenance operations too!
Daley was not an easy person to influence into changing his mind. Meigs Field was named for “Babe” Meigs, an executive on the Chicago newspaper owned by the Hearst group. He was also a Bonanza owner and pilot. As a former executive with Hearst I knew Bill Hearst well and asked him to try to persuade Daley. By that time the newspaper owned by Hearst had stopped publishing, so Bill had no leverage over then Mayor Daley. Bill tried to keep Meigs open but failed.
The Chicago Tribune on Sundat, March 31, had a two page article about Meigs (now referred
to as “Northerly Island”).
It included plans for future development, which the city will not have money for, but the
drawings look pretty.
Two of the items include a pedestrian/bike bridge from the midpoint across Burnham Harbor
to what looks like somewhere near Soldier Field. When they find out that it must be 80 or
90 feet above the water, they will profess to be astonished that sailboats with masts that
high go in and out of the Harbor.
Another insane plan is for an underground parking garage at the North end. When they find out
that the landfill used to build the original island will require millions more of shoring up
they will again say “Gee, we never thought of that”.
And the fools who keep re-electing the same ones will continue to bend over.
What Daley and his goons did was criminal! Just about the entire Chicago shoreline along Lake Michigan already was park land. Northerly Island, as the former Meigs Field is now known, is a useless, dreary appendage. Meigs was a spark of activity on the lakefront. And it was a major gateway for pilots into the City. The wanton destruction of this valuable public asset was a shameful and illegal event, and severe penalties should have been exacted. But Chicago-style politics has a motto: “Screw the people.”
And today we see that same Chicago-Style politics in the White House and slowly taking over the entire country.