They fly in from Whirlpool Corp. over in Benton Harbor, Mich., and from Sundstrand Corp. up in Rockford.
They fly out from Chicago’s own Fruit of the Loom Inc., from Ameritech Corp. and from Sears, Roebuck and Co.
They are the time-is-money business executives who guide some of the Midwest’s largest commercial enterprises. When they need to get to or from Chicago, perhaps for a quick morning meeting so they can be back in their office by noon, they use the little airport on the lake called Merrill C. Meigs Field.
Pretty soon, though, they’ll have to pound down the Stevenson or Kennedy expressways like everybody else. And wait their turn at Midway or at O’Hare International Airport, like everybody else.
It seems that Mayor Richard Daley has other plans for Northerly Island, the peninsula east of Soldier Field on which Meigs Field was built nearly 50 years ago. Come 1996, when the airport’s lease expires, Daley wants to convert the landfill there into a nature preserve, complete with dune grass, walking trails and a marsh for migratory birds.
Goodness knows there’s nothing wrong with that. Chicago’s lakefront, as much as is possible, ought to be kept open to the public and free of commercial activity. That was what the city’s original subdividers had in mind when in 1836 they platted a lakefront common “forever open, clear and free.” And it’s what planner Daniel Burnham called for in his 1909 plan, the one that would have reworked the shoreline into a series of recreational piers and barrier islands. (Only Navy Pier and Northerly Island were ever built.)
But Burnham’s concept left room for interpretation about what constitutes a “public” use, which is one reason that civic fights over the lakefront have been a staple of local politics and journalism. Almost all the disputes have been cast in terms of good-versus-evil; of civic-minded naturalists up against the forces of shortsighted greed. Over the years the role of the heavy has been played by the Illinois Central Railroad, the Chicago Park District, real estate developers and even this newspaper, which remains unforgiven in certain circles for its role in siting McCormick Place on the lake at 22nd Street.
The Meigs-versus-marsh controversy, which is just beginning to heat up, falls into the same pattern.
No doubt Mayor Daley, whose father was pilloried for building filtration plants on the lake, figures he’s on the side of the angels this time. It’s hard to go wrong standing with the civic greens against the privileged few who fly in and out of Meigs aboard their Lear jets and King-Air 300s. So stacked is this deck that corporate Chicago has been hesitant to publicly defend their convenience. A handful of CEOs have written letters to City Hall at the behest of the National Business Aircraft Association, the Washington-based lobby for corporate aviation, but you haven’t seen an Ameritech or a Bank One–two big Users of Meigs–call a press conference to complain. And you probably won’t, given the prevailing coporate squeamishness about crossing the powers at City Hall.
To date, the only big-hitter to publicly take on the mayor has been Gov. Jim Edgar.
“I think it doesn’t make sense if you’re trying to make sure the city stays economically vibrant,” Edgar said recently after stepping off a helicopter at the lakefront airstrip. “It’s a big plus when companies are thinking of spending money in the city or investing in the city. They know they can get downtown very quickly.”
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Some commentators figure Edgar’s position has something to do with the O’Hare-Peotone-Gary dogfight over airport supremacy. Or that the governor is selfishly protecting the State of Illinois’ own daily shuttles to and from Springfield.
This corner takes a different view. I think the governor is just plain right.
Why, indeed, tear up and throw away a facility that has become a valuable asset in the global competition among cities for economic development, jobs and tax revenues? Why, indeed, for a nature preserve that doesn’t yet exist, that hardly anyone asked for, and that very few Chicagoans–other than those who already live along the lakefront–are apt to frequent? It doesn’t make sense.
Nor does it make sense, what with the closing of Glenview Naval Air Station and the downgrading of the Coast Guard rescue service there, to shut down the city’s only lakefront helicopter rescue pad.
Granted, the state’s Springfield shuttles could fly out of Midway, as could United Express commuter flights to other midwestern cities. It’s no big deal to inconvenience the bueaucrats or the hoi polloi.
But it might be a very big deal to inconvenience the time-is-money flyers who account for half the traffic at Meigs. Nobody knows how many jobs will be lost if Meigs closes. Nobody knows how many billings will be lost to downtown law and accounting firms, to consultancies and to advertising agencies, if the bosses at Maytag Corp. and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. decide it’s easier to buy their professional services in St. Louis or Des Moines. Nobody knows how many conventions, and high-powered conventioneers, will be lost to the newly-expanded McCormick Place. Or how many gourmet dinners won’t be served at the Everest, or hotel rooms occupied at the Ritz-Carlton, or sky boxes left empty at Soldier Field.
Nobody knows, but by closing Meigs Field the city seems determined to find out.