page_title: Meigs Field
section_title: Demolition and closure
hierarchical_section_title: Meigs Field / History / Demolition and closure
caption_attribution_description: English: Meigs Field Runway a few days after destruction ordered by Mayor Daley
context_page_description: Merrill C. Meigs Field Airport was a single runway airport in Chicago that was in operation from December 1948 until March 2003, on Northerly Island, an artificial peninsula on Lake Michigan. The airport sat adjacent to downtown Chicago, the second largest business district in North America.
  Meigs Field airport was opened on 10 December 1948, and, by 1955, had become the busiest single-strip airport in the United States. The airport was a familiar sight on the downtown lakefront. The latest air traffic tower was built in 1952 and the terminal was dedicated in 1961. The airfield was named for Merrill C. Meigs.
  Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley forced the closing of Meigs in 2003 by ordering the overnight bulldozing of its runway without notice, in violation of Federal Aviation Administration regulations.
context_section_description: In 1994, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced plans to close the airport and build a park in its place. Northerly Island, where the airport was located, was owned by the Chicago Park District, which refused to renew the airport lease in 1996. The city briefly closed the airport from the expiration of the lease in October 1996 through February 1997 when pressure from the state legislature persuaded them to reopen the airport.
  In 2001, a compromise was reached between Chicago, the State of Illinois, and others to keep the airport open for the next twenty-five years. However, the federal legislation component of the deal did not pass the United States Senate.
  In a controversial and illegal move on the night of Sunday, March 30, 2003, Mayor Daley ordered city crews to make the runway unusable by bulldozing large X-shaped gouges into the runway surface in the middle of the night. The required demolition notice was not given to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or the owners of airplanes tied down at the field. As a result, sixteen planes were left stranded at the airport and an inbound flight had to be diverted by Air Traffic Control because of equipment scattered on the runway. The stranded aircraft were later allowed to depart from Meigs' 3,000-foot (910 m) taxiway.
  "To do this any other way would have been needlessly contentious," Mayor Daley explained at a news conference on March 31. Daley defended his actions, described as "appalling" by general aviation interest groups, by claiming it would save the City of Chicago the effort of further court battles before the airport could close. He claimed that safety concerns required the closure, due to the post-September 11 risk of terrorist-controlled aircraft attacking the downtown waterfront near Meigs Field.
  "The signature act of Richard Daley's 22 years in office was the midnight bulldozing of Meigs Field," according to Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn. "He ruined Meigs because he wanted to, because he could," columnist John Kass wrote of Daley in the Chicago Tribune.
  While aviation interests and commentators decried the move, supporters of the park proposal praised Daley for saving the city from costly court battles and returning the site to its original purposes. For example, the Lake Michigan Federation (later the Alliance for the Great Lakes) released in February 2001 an urban wilderness plan for the site. Instead of calling it "Northerly Island" a reference to the northernmost landmass of four others that were never built under the 1909 Plan of Chicago, "Sanctuary Point" would allow access for many more people than the fairly exclusive use as an airstrip.
  On July 28, 2003, an aircraft flying to Oshkosh, Wisconsin from Maine to the Experimental Aircraft Association Annual Convention made an emergency landing on the grass next to the demolished Meigs Field runway. Mayor Daley accused the pilot of intentionally landing in order to "embarrass" him, despite the FAA's statement that the pilot "did the correct thing" in landing the plane at Meigs. After effecting electrical repairs, the plane safely took off and continued to Oshkosh.
  Interest groups, led by the Friends of Meigs Field, attempted to use the courts to reopen Meigs Field over the following months, but because the airport was owned by the City of Chicago and had paid back its federal aviation grants, the courts ruled that Chicago was allowed to close the field. The FAA fined the city $33,000 for closing an airport with a charted instrument approach without giving the required 30-day notice. This was the maximum fine the law allowed at the time. In the aftermath, the "Meigs Legacy provision" was passed into law, increasing the maximum fine per day from $1,100 to $10,000. On September 17, 2006, the city dropped all legal appeals and agreed to pay the $33,000 fine as well as repay $1 million in misappropriated FAA Airport Improvement Program funds that it used to destroy the airfield and build Northerly Island Park.
caption: Meigs Field Runway a few days after destruction ordered by Mayor Daley. The large X marks were cut into the runway by bulldozers to prevent aircraft from taking off or landing
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