Meigs Field bulldozed by Mayor Daley 15 years ago

The City was supposed to operate the airport until 2011, according to an agreement with the state.

I wonder if the airport would have closed then anyway, in 2011, if Daley had not dug up the runway in 2003.
 
Surprised the local roaming gangs didn't use the trenches for trench warfare lol


What a bunch of fail that place is.
 
Chicago apparently doesn't know what a bulldozer is either.


This is a track hoe, also known as an excavator.

C10878234



This is a bulldozer.
7712b0c3-1376702178-d_pic.jpg


Class dismissed.
 
Having grown up near Chicago and lived downtown for a few years, I love the city and visit as often as I can.

But f*** Daley. That family was a scourge on the city. When I was a kid we used to go right there to watch the fireworks on the 3rd of July. We'd get there mid morning and camp out in a shady spot, watching the planes take off and land all day. The airport was a treasure of the city and a unique landmark on the country, and that ******* ruined it.


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NoHeat said:
The City was supposed to operate the airport until 2011, according to an agreement with the state.

I wonder if the airport would have closed then anyway, in 2011, if Daley had not dug up the runway in 2003.
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It was already a done deal and was going. He got impatient. What he got busted for was not complying with FAA regulations requiring notification of changes to the NAS
 
F Daley. May he burn in Hell.
 
What is forgotten is that Daley wanted a casino and Meigs was the perfect spot, that never happened and the land sat for years, now a park.

IL and Chicago are so broke and the politicians all crooks, y'all think Daley was a crook?, look at who is mayor now, a total disgrace
 
Eric Gleason said:
But f*** Daley. The airport was a treasure of the city and a unique landmark on the country, and that ******* ruined it.
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I edited your post for brevity and focus, and I completely agree with your assessment. Daley's claim the airport was an attraction to terrorists was one of the lamest statements to come out of his lying mouth.

It made no sense to destroy a business tool which greatly facilitated the efficiency of general aviation. Meigs made downtown Chicago a much more attractive location for corporate headquarters. While the 3,900' runway wouldn't support large corporate aircraft, it was long enough to handle midsize jets that weren't operating at MTOW.

I imagine Daley's actions made Boeing unhappy, after being fed cake and ice cream by the city just 24 months earlier in an effort to land the relocation of their headquarters from Seattle to Chicago. General Dynamics and Oracle also have significant operations in the near west side downtown area.

In addition, there are several other large public companies located in this part of downtown, and it's a safe bet to say Meigs supported some corporate aviation operations for many of them.

How many millions of dollars in fees and taxes have gone uncollected in the last 15 years?
 
3393RP said:
I edited your post for brevity and focus, and I completely agree with your assessment. Daley's claim the airport was an attraction to terrorists was one of the lamest statements to come out of his lying mouth.
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Technically he was correct. He was attracted enough to it to commit an act of Domestic Terrorism on it.
 
Seriously... As a non-resident what was Daley's stated reason for closing the field? It can't be noise abatement issues from neighbors.
 
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As I said above, he invoked the spectre of terrorist attacks. How the small airport would facilitate an attack was never explained.

Since the 9/11 attacks originated from Boston Logan, wouldn't it have made more sense to close O'Hare? Idiot.
 
NordicDave said:
Seriously... As a non-resident what was Daley's stated reason for closing the field? It can't be noise abatement issues from neighbors.
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From this article.

Though Daley had long wanted to close Meigs and turn Northerly Island into a park, he gave a different reason for the runway destruction at the time, saying he was trying to reduce any airborne threat against downtown buildings "in these very uncertain times" — only a year and a half after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
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So the terrorist threat was very convenient to Daley to accomplish his goals just like it was convenient to both the security theatre folks and the military industrial complex.

But I particularly like this quote from the same article.
Al Capone. The Stockyards. Pan-style pizza. And the Daley dynasty that could pull off the "Meigs Massacre." They are all among the icons depicting what Chicago looks and smells like to the rest of the world.
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Yep. And it doesn’t smell good. Well, except for the pizza.
 
NordicDave said:
Seriously... As a non-resident what was Daley's stated reason for closing the field? It can't be noise abatement issues from neighbors.
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The airport had been operating without a lease for eight years.

The city and the state negotiated a plan to keep it open for 25 years as part of a deal to get funding for O'hare expansion.

The federal government decided not to fund the deal.

9/11 happened.

Security was top of mind for everyone and a number of bad decisions were made as a result. Meig's was one of them.
 
Now that what had been Class D airspace is Class G up to 700 feet AGL and E from there to 3000 MSL, the terrorists will be sure to stay away from downtown.
 
THANK YOU, for the pic. And, as so many others, I remember FS opened at Meigs, too.

My dad and I flew there a couple of times a year. It was also noted that it was off-limits to student pilots.

As soon as my PPL was passed, I flew from CPS to Meigs to celebrate my new freedom.

My wife and I went to the park in 2008, just to see what was there. So sad.
 
172andyou said:
The airport had been operating without a lease for eight years.

The city and the state negotiated a plan to keep it open for 25 years as part of a deal to get funding for O'hare expansion.

The federal government decided not to fund the deal.

9/11 happened.

Security was top of mind for everyone and a number of bad decisions were made as a result. Meig's was one of them.
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Security was the excuse Daley used. It was not the real reason. Any person with an ounce of common sense would realize that aircraft arriving to or departing from ORD or MDW are far more of a 9/11 type threat than any thing in and out of Meigs.
 
Rat Bastard, I grew up there and loved that airport, have a nice framed photo of it in my den. I still have the plastic Daley model hanging in effigy in my hangar that some vendor was selling at OSH the following year.
 
If anti-terrorism was the excuse... what was Daley's real motive. I would guess getting his palms greased by developers, but nothing has been built there yet.

Or is just rank stupidity that a small airport could be a terrorist threat. Or was just pay back to the Feds for not providing the O'Hare funding.
 
NordicDave said:
If anti-terrorism was the excuse... what was Daley's real motive. I would guess getting his palms greased by developers, but nothing has been built there yet.

Or is just rank stupidity that a small airport could be a terrorist threat. Or was just pay back to the Feds for not providing the O'Hare funding.
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It wasn't developers. The land has always been owned by the park district and was immediately put to use in that fashion.

We'll probably never know. But the most plausible theory I've heard, is that he has (had?) a place that overlooked the area and, being a pretty self important guy, might have figured that someone would fly a plane into his condo. Yeah, yeah, we know as aviators that the same plane could still, today, fly out of ten nearby airport - but he's clearly aviation ignorant and might have built a bigger threat up in his mind.

Anyway, may not be true, but does incorporate several facts about him and the circumstance into an internally consistent story.
 
I had heard that he wanted to build a park and name it for himself or maybe for his wife. I can believe any theory that is built on the premise that his ego is large and his intellect small.
 
So I I went out and vandalized federally-overseen property, I would be in jail now.
Did that f***er ever get any criminal charges pressed against him (and hopefully stick)? Or just because he's a big shot, he was forgiven such an act of vandalism and destruction of property?
(I do not have a dog in this fight, I do not, nor have I ever lived in IL and I am not politically affiliated with his party or his opposing party)

Disclaimer: I do understand that I could simply google this information but I prefer second-hand news from my pah-let peeps cuz I'm a lazy SOB. (soul) ;)
 
BigBadLou said:
So I I went out and vandalized federally-overseen property, I would be in jail now.
Did that f***er ever get any criminal charges pressed against him (and hopefully stick)? Or just because he's a big shot, he was forgiven such an act of vandalism and destruction of property?
(I do not have a dog in this fight, I do not, nor have I ever lived in IL and I am not politically affiliated with his party or his opposing party)

Disclaimer: I do understand that I could simply google this information but I prefer second-hand news from my pah-let peeps cuz I'm a lazy SOB. (soul) ;)
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Because he was an elected oligarch the FAA threatened the city, not him personally, for the destruction of the airport.

FAA fined Chicago $33,000 for not notifying them in advance of the closure (pocket change) and then dug in and found Chicago used $1.5M skated for O’Hare improvements from the Airport Improvement Fund to destroy Meigs, which can carry a fine of the dollar amount times three for doing so.

Chicago attorneys claimed Meigs was an “abandoned airport” at first and that using the aviation money from FAA to destroy it was a “clean up”.

FAA didn’t agree and three years after the 2003 AOPA lawsuit that brought the $33,000 fine, well after any Chicago taxpayers would notice what Daley cost them, Chicago quietly agreed with FAA to move $1M from one of their non-aviation tax sources back into the aviation improvement fund in a quiet settlement with FAA, while still not admitting any wrongdoing.

So essentially the net result was, a wimpy $33,000 fine paid by Chicago taxpayers, Daley off Scott free, and Chicago taxpayers paid for 2/3 of the destruction while Federal taxpayers paid for 1/3 of it. Oh and both Chicago and Federal taxpayers kept a number of lawyers quite rich throughout the process. As did AOPA.

Absolutely no real accountability whatsoever. No even a token slap on the wrist.

Chicago even used the closure of Stapleton in Denver as their legal basis for spending Airport Improvement Funds money on a closure, ignoring that Stapleton was being replaced with DEN completely. Because, lawyers.
 
OkieFlyer said:
Chicago apparently doesn't know what a bulldozer is either.


This is a track hoe, also known as an excavator.

C10878234



This is a bulldozer.
7712b0c3-1376702178-d_pic.jpg


Class dismissed.
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Well waddaya expect from a bunch of city boys?

By the way, just picked up a pair of camo mud boots on clearance at Tractor Supply. Figure when we do the Redneck Pilot MU-2 episode, I can wear those with my camo hat and a suit and tie.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
Well waddaya expect from a bunch of city boys?

By the way, just picked up a pair of camo mud boots on clearance at Tractor Supply. Figure when we do the Redneck Pilot MU-2 episode, I can wear those with my camo hat and a suit and tie.
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You’ll need a hunter orange safety vest on top of the camo to complete the look.
 
BigBadLou said:
So I I went out and vandalized federally-overseen property, I would be in jail now.
Did that f***er ever get any criminal charges pressed against him (and hopefully stick)?
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It wasn't federal property, it belongs to the city. They used federal funds for its operation, which is why they got the $33k fine for shutting it down.

I didn't realize they'd used other aviation funds for the destruction project or that there was a settlement.


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Eric Gleason said:
It wasn't federal property, it belongs to the city. They used federal funds for its operation, which is why they got the $33k fine for shutting it down.

I didn't realize they'd used other aviation funds for the destruction project or that there was a settlement.
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Yep. Settlement was in 2006. Basically enough time for them to quietly save up a million dollars in some non-aviation account the city had and keep the whole thing off of the radar of the public paying for Daley’s misbehavior by being “too old” a story for the Press to care about.

Pretty typical. Drag out the response long enough nobody knows they’re paying for oligarch’s misdeeds. No personal repercussions for the oligarch.

Kinda like when cops get sued for misbehavior and cities settle. We all pay for that too. And the news reports it as “justice being served”. LOL.

It’s difficult to explain to people their view of how the law applies to government is just an illusion they believe. They don’t like the shock of that reality after being taught it’s all goodness and light.
 
Most people also don't understand the difference between civil and criminal penalties, and that it's rare for anyone to be held personally liable for civil infractions when acting in an official capacity. :mad2:
 
iamtheari said:
I had heard that he wanted to build a park and name it for himself or maybe for his wife. I can believe any theory that is built on the premise that his ego is large and his intellect small.
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Oh, I forgot to mention it. But she was very ill with cancer at that time. So that
Eric Gleason said:
It wasn't federal property, it belongs to the city. They used federal funds for its operation, which is why they got the $33k fine for shutting it down.
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Almost. They didn't have any FAA obligations associated with funding. In fact, that airport hadn't even had a lease from the city for the land in nearly a decade. The $30K was for shutting down the instrument approach without 30 days notice.
 
Eric Gleason said:
Most people also don't understand the difference between civil and criminal penalties, and that it's rare for anyone to be held personally liable for civil infractions when acting in an official capacity. :mad2:
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There was nothing civil about his infraction. :D

I was hoping for criminal prosecution because what he committed were crimes. I was thinking that charges against his person for ordering destruction and vandalism could be brought up by any dumbazz lawyer with half a brain .... aaaawww ... I see where I erred. Nm, move on.
But all seriousness aside, I guess since he damaged city property, the city would be the one to file criminal charges and they did not "feel like it". What's the statute of limitations on such such crimes? I don't think it expired so charges still could be filed? Or is it too late?
 
This was a big deal to AOPA 15 years ago. I sure they found some other airports to land N4GA for party weekends by now.
 
Eric Gleason said:
Most people also don't understand the difference between civil and criminal penalties, and that it's rare for anyone to be held personally liable for civil infractions when acting in an official capacity. :mad2:
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Which is a significant problem these days considering bulldozing an airport for personal reasons can hardly be considered “acting in an official capacity”. But government protects its own.

Clip4 said:
This was a big deal to AOPA 15 years ago. I sure they found some other airports to land N4GA for party weekends by now.
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They sued and won and that lawsuit highlighted the misappropriation of O’Hare funds to destroy the airport. Then three years later, government protected itself from itself and cut a deal with Chicago so we’d all pay 1/3 of the destruction bill. Not sure what else you’d expect them to do.

I have a few beefs with AOPA, but their handling of the Meigs destruction, by a Domestic Terrorist driving bulldozers, under any current definitions of those words, isn’t one of them.
 
The guy sounds like a complete douche. No matter how you look at, doing this in the middle of the night, with no warning and leaving airplanes stranded on the field, sounds like a tool bag with an authority complex. What a scum bag.
 
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