By Michael Miner
The papers were contemplating the mayor’s lovely idea of transforming Northerly Island into a nature preserve. But by this summer their enthusiasm had all but evaporated. An offshore haven from Chicago’s shocks and stresses mattered less to them now than the damage it posed to the city’s infrastructure. The park lay somewhere off in a gilded future. The closing of Meigs Field was real and imminent.
“But ask the city about impacts of the closing that aren’t addressed in the reports, and officials respond that if it isn’t in the study it isn’t a significant factor. What a novel, self-proving test: We didn’t analyze it because it isn’t significant, and if it were significant we would have analyzed it.
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“I note that the local pro-Meigs groups are a ragtag bunch of activists, the vanguard of which have little to no experience in grassroots campaigning and political windmill tilting. While long on enthusiasm, they have come up short on the time and funding to factually refute the city’s data. As a result, they have little data of their own for me to unravel, and what there is of it is extrapolated from others’ official reports. When they get some you can be sure I will be just as strict in my scrutiny as I have been with the city.
“First of all, as has been clearly stated of late by city and parks officials, there never was any doubt among them that Meigs Field was going to close. Anyone who attended a city-sponsored forum on the plan believing Meigs’s fate was hanging in the balance was mistaken. The only question officials ever considered was what to do with the airport once it closed. They have explicitly said so, and on this I’ll take them at their word.
“Excuse me, but I do get testy when officials substitute their own questions for the ones I am asking. I wanted to know whether they studied pollution increases resulting from longer commutes and drive times. The final city response (paraphrased): We didn’t study that because it is insignificant. If it were significant, we would have studied it.
“On the other hand, the city says the new park–the ‘neighborhood park’–will bring $30 million to the city’s economy. Why? Because one-half of the 300,000 new visitors it will attract annually will come from out of town, and each individual will spend more than $140 on food, lodging, museum admission, and souvenirs per visit. The other 150,000 will be area residents–you know, people from the neighborhoods–and each man, woman, and child of them is expected to spend about $40 each time they visit, according to the city. That seems like a lot of per capita bucks to expect of families from Englewood, Austin, Pullman, Humboldt Park, Uptown, the near west side, and all the other struggling city neighborhoods just for an afternoon in the park or a walk through a museum.
