As concert-goers stream onto Northerly Island this weekend to catch a show by the South Side’s own Chief Keef at an outdoor theater, they may not realize there used to be a different type of buzz there: Of planes taking off and landing at a little airport called Meigs Field.
But Chicagoans of a certain age may recall its controversy: The general aviation airfield, with a single runway and a stubby control tower, occupied the artificial island starting in the late 1940s, ultimately catering to aviation enthusiasts, along with business and government types gaining easy access — via jets, prop planes and choppers — to the Loop.
At least until 2003.
That’s when Chicago’s then-mayor, Richard M. Daley, abruptly closed the airfield by quietly ordering in heavy machinery to carve giant X marks in the 3,900-foot-long runway, rendering the site inoperable. There was no advance notice, except perhaps a backdoor tip off to select powerbrokers.
Daley explained that it was a post-9/11 security measure, with the airfield in the midst of all those high-rises, and he insisted he couldn’t jeopardize Chicago’s safety and security — though the explanation was never quite credible.
He’d wanted for years — well before 9/11 — to convert the plot into open green space, only to face resistance from flying advocates, businesspeople and state officials including then-Gov. George Ryan.
As WBEZ has reported, Daley, a Democrat, was battling Ryan, a Republican, over Meigs’ future, and “they reached an agreement to keep Meigs open for 25 years. In exchange, Ryan supported a proposed O’Hare Airport expansion,” something Daley desired, as city officials controlled O’Hare and badly wanted runways reconfigured to remain an economic force.
But “no O’Hare bill cleared Congress, and Daley said the Meigs deal was off.”
A political nemesis of the Daley family, the late Mayor Jane Byrne, similarly proposed closing Meigs in 1980 to “make it a recreational island,” hosting “future productions of ChicagoFest,” which was a precursor to the Taste of Chicago. But that plan never materialized.
The terminal at Meigs was dedicated in 1961, when Daley’s father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, was in office. He was at the airfield a year earlier when then-U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy took a helicopter to Meigs from Midway Airport while in town for what turned out to be a historic televised debate with then-Vice President Richard Nixon in the presidential race.
The airport was named for long-ago newspaper publisher Merrill C. Meigs, who died in 1968 at age 84, and once rubbed elbows with aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, President Harry Truman and auto maker Henry Ford.
Other famous folks used Meigs Field, including another Ford: Harrison Ford, who grew up in Park Ridge and has been a small-aircraft pilot. The Star Wars actor once slammed Daley’s closure as “an incredibly dumb thing to do,” according to a published account.
Among the crews brought in by the Daley administration to handle the Meigs destruction was Rossi Contractors, Inc., of Northlake, which remains a major O’Hare contractor and that’s been paid hundreds of millions of dollars over the years by City Hall.
The contracting firm has been embroiled in other controversies over the years, and a company executive had been a campaign donor to Daley.
The closure left some pilots stranded at Meigs, unable to take off.
Meigs wasn’t considered a particularly dangerous airfield, even though it was surrounded by water, but there were a number of fatal crashes over the years.
In 1972, a small plane piloted by an Iowa man and carrying his wife and their three young children crashed into Lake Michigan upon takeoff. The man survived, everyone else perished.
Distraught, and blaming himself for the crash, he shot himself in the heart, according to news reports.
The airfield’s 2003 closure came within days of then-President George W. Bush starting what many believe was an ill-fated war in Iraq.
Critics have accused Bush of using the climate of fear that followed 9/11 to launch the invasion — not for national and regional security reasons, as stated, but because of oil.
Critics have accused Daley of using the same climate of fear to justify closing Meigs, with his real goal being added parkland. Today, Northerly Island has prairie space, paths and recreation areas — including the Huntington Bank Pavilion where Chief Keef is set to play.
“We did a lot of things after 9/11” that were necessary to tighten up security, said a former city official. “Maybe some of it proved to be opportunistic.”
Another former high-ranking city official echoed that, saying of Daley: “He found a blocker and he ran behind it.”
But, he added, “It really should have been a park for a long time.”