4/3/2006 - On Third Anniversary of Loss Meigs Field Fans Strategize To Reopen
CHICAGO -- Proponents of rebuilding Meigs Field met Friday to mourn its sudden closure three years ago -- and to map political strategy for the future.
"It was a bad decision. It was a wrong decision. And I don't know of anything that's wrong that becomes right simply with the passage of time," said Meigs Action Coalition President Rachel Goodstein.
WBBM's Bob Roberts reports the Coalition is a distinct organization from the Friends of Meigs Field, the non-profit coalition of pilots and friends of private aviation who sought to keep the airport open throughout the 1990s.
Meigs Field- File photo
Instead, the coalition is a political action committee and Goodstein said its goal is twofold: to get Meigs reopened, and to put candidates in office who support the idea.
Goodstein said Mayor Daley's order to bulldoze Meigs in the middle of the night March 31, 2003, remains an "international embarrassment," has cost Chicago convention business and has made the city more vulnerable to terrorism -- not safer, as Daley has long contended.
And, with the Dan Ryan Expressway and O'Hare International Airport both under reconstruction, Goodstein said the lack of Meigs as a safety valve hurts all the more.
"We have made Chicago less convenient," she said.
Goodstein said the city's recent decision to build a small heliport next to the mouth of the Chicago River is an admission that closing Meigs was a mistake.
She has long contended that the city mismanaged Meigs in its final years of operation to minimize its use. She points instead to London, England's City Airport, built astride the Thames (tems) River. Comparable in size to Meigs, she said it now has scheduled service to and from 26 cities and hosts 1.7 million passengers a year, in addition to private aircraft.
The Meigs Action Coalition is already talking with those ready to challenge the status quo at City Hall, and has begun asking potential candidates for alderman and mayor whether they would support its reconstruction, using a plan that would incorporate park space and an aviation museum into a rebuilt airport.
The key to the proposal, which has been rejected both by the Chicago Park District board and Daley personally, is sale of Northerly Island by the Park District to the city of Chicago for $100 million in Federal Aviation Administration Airport Improvement Funds. Goodstein said the Park District could then use the money to improve parks elsewhere in the city without any impact to Chicago taxpayers.
At a dinner Friday night to mark the anniversary, Goodstein and other Meigs Action Coalition supporters met with several potential 2007 political candidates. She said the "parks with planes" plan makes too much sense to "go away."
"When I look at $100 million that could be used...to keep kids out of trouble, yeah, that gets me going. It really gets me going," she said. "It's not going away."
-WBBM by Bob Roberts
<-- Go Back
