Sept. 27, 2007

Building Homes on Meigs Field

I gave a talk this week about airports at the NBAA Convention in Atlanta and I used Chicago Meigs Field as an example of how people can rally to save an endangered field the way Steve Whitney and the Friends of Meigs did to save the “Coolest Little Airport in the World,” a few years ago.

Chicago’s mayor Richard Daley closed it once, but FOM got it reopened much to everyone’s surprise, especially Mayor Daley’s.

But then one summer’s evening, Daley destroyed a perfectly good lakefront airport in the middle of the night with bulldozers closing the place forever.

And now, adding insult to injury for a kid who used to work at Meigs Field, a kid who used to fly into and out of Meigs – landed runway 18 one time in a Citation and scared the heck out of myself – I read an advertisement in AutoPilot magazine for a company prepared to build custom homes with hangars on Meigs Field.

It just ain’t fair I tell ya!

Meigs Field, just a mile or two from the legendary Wrigley Field, home of the soon to win the World Series Cubbies. And they want to build homes there. And the little Meigs Field control tower building is still standing there sort of guarding the site for someday when airplanes might return. Or maybe the mayor left it there to snub his nose at FOM.

And now, homes on Meigs Field.

Hang on … I just noticed something in this ad. This Meigs Field is in Houston, not Chicago. There’s a guy named Doug Meigs who wants to build an aviation subdivision down there and he’s somehow conned the FAA into giving him permission to use the name of our airport in Houston.

Have you no shame Doug Meigs?

FAA … figures. Meigs would still be a perfectly viable airport if the FAA had not handed it over to the mayor in the first place.

The good news at NBAA though was that another airport seems to have been pulled from the endangered list … Cleveland Burke Lakefront – also threatened with extinction – has been saved by the city.

Good for you guys who must have busted your tails to save the airport in Cleveland. You were rewarded by someone in government who listened.

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