http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigs_Field#Demolition_and_Closure_by_Chicago_Mayor_Richard_M._Daley
Demolition and Closure by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley
Meigs Field Runway a few days after destruction ordered by Mayor Daley
In 1994, Mayor Richard M. Daley announced plans to close the airport and build a park in its place on Northerly Island. 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 move on March 31, 2003, Mayor Daley ordered private crews to destroy the runway in the middle of the night, bulldozing large X-shaped gouges into the runway surface. The required notice was not given to the Federal Aviation Administration or the owners of airplanes tied down at the field, and as a result sixteen planes were left stranded at an airport with no operating runway, and an incoming flight was diverted. The stranded aircraft were later allowed to depart from Meigs' 3,000-foot (910 m) taxiway.
Mayor 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. In reality, closing the airport made the airspace less restrictive. When the airport was open, downtown Chicago was within Meigs Field's Class D airspace, requiring two-way radio communication with the tower. The buildings in downtown Chicago are now in Class E/G airspace, which allows any airplane to legally fly as close as 1,000 feet (300 m) from these buildings with no radio communication at all
"The issue is Daley's increasingly authoritarian style that brooks no disagreements, legal challenges, negotiations, compromise or any of that messy give-and-take normally associated with democratic government," the Chicago Tribune editorialized. "He ruined Meigs because he wanted to, because he could," columnist John Kass wrote of Daley in the Chicago Tribune.[ Daley himself played the populist against the general aviation pilots who had previously used the airport because of its ideal location.
On July 28, 2003, an aircraft flying to Oshkosh, Wisconsin from Maine made an emergency landing on the grass next to the demolished Meigs Field runway. In comments, 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 US$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 US$1,100 to US$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 the Northerly Island park.
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