On Monday 27 March 2006 17:48, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I have a few questions about Chicago scenery: Is the Meigs airfield made > into a park now? Is that the reason FG airport data does not have it?
Meigs is a sad story. AOPA's battle to save Meigs began in 1994 when Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley announced plans to convert Meigs Field to a park. He could do that because of a unique FAA grant agreement that gave him an "escape clause." That FAA grant had special language that allowed Daley to close Meigs in 1996 when the lease between the city of Chicago and the Chicago Park District for the airport land expired. To make the story short, there was a whole lot of legal wrangling between supporters of Meigs (FOM, AOPA) and the Chicago Mayor with the airport being shut down and then reopened. Then the blow nobody saw coming: In the late evening of March 30, 2003, Daley and his bulldozers struck, gouging huge Xs in the runway and cutting taxiway entrances. The media was kept at bay; a Chicago fire truck blinded the Internet camera on the nearby Adler Planetarium with a spotlight. Daley said the deal to save Meigs was void because the Senate hadn't passed the O'Hare legislation. And he claimed he was saving the citizens of Chicago from the "terrorist threat" from the little lakeside airport. He later recanted that claim and admitted he just wanted a park. And the citizens of Chicago never believed the terrorist threat anyhow. And what do the people of Chicago think about Daley's destruction of Meigs? They didn't like it. Some two thirds of Chicago voters disapproved of Mayor Daley's destruction of Meigs Field Airport, according to a scientific poll published in the Chicago Tribune June 16. Even a majority of Democrats (Daley's party) didn't like it. And more than 70 percent didn't believe the mayor's claim that the lakeside airport presented a terrorist threat to downtown Chicago. But Daley doesn't care. Having just been reelected to a fourth term with 78% of the vote, and with a reputation for using city resources to punish those who cross him, Daley figures he can do what he wants — and he does. "I wasn't elected to be a lover boy," he once told the press when pressed about his Meigs attack. Taken from : http://www.aero-news.net/Community/DiscussTopic.cfm?TopicID=561&Refresh=1 Paul ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by xPML, a groundbreaking scripting language that extends applications into web and mobile media. Attend the live webcast and join the prime developer group breaking into this new coding territory! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid0944&bid$1720&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
