The Best Laid Plans…A Third Chicago Airport
Jerry Banik, September, 2022
“This is your captain speaking. As we begin our descent into the Lake Calumet International Airport, please be certain your tray tables and seat backs are in their upright and locked position. As we approach our landing, passengers on both sides of our aircraft will get breathtakingly close views of Whiting, Robertsdale and North Hammond, Indiana. The people you’ll see below shaking their fists are the townsfolk who lost their homes, livelihoods and quality of life in order to make our new airport possible.”
Let’s take a look at just how close this scenario came to becoming a reality, and how it was avoided.
How it all started…
A January 7, 1968 Hammond Times headline.
It all began when Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley began beating the drum for a third Chicago metropolitan airport back in 1968. He proposed building it on a man-made island, half the size of Manhattan, in Lake Michigan. City officials and “aviation experts” had determined that a third airport would be needed by 1975, despite plans already in place to expand both the Midway and O’Hare airports. Actual experts, affected residents and conservationists, who felt the plan would do irreparable damage to the lake, its wildlife and their neighborhoods, felt otherwise.
The 1968 airport-in-the-lake site.
Fifty-nine million cubic yards of sand, gravel and rock were to be hauled three-and-a-half miles off shore and dumped into the lake, east of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, forming a circular dike four miles in diameter, and faced with thirteen million cubic yards of stone. Lake water was to be pumped out of the circle and the airport built on the lake floor. Reached from land by way of a bridge and a tunnel under the dike, the massive engineering project would be complete within four years at a cost of $284 million. Or would it?
This airport-in-the-lake plan, intriguing as it first appeared, never got past the drawing board.
An idea that wouldn’t die…
Years went by. The airport in the lake may have been dead, but Chicago still wanted that third airport, and the political and legal machinery ground on.
In 1982, a lawsuit filed by neighboring communities blocked expansion plans for additional runways at O’Hare. Chicago put pressure on the Federal Aviation Administration, and in 1984 the FAA ordered a needs analysis for a third airport for the city. A consultant was hired to determine the best of fifteen potential sites.
Two years later, representatives of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and the F.A.A. formed a policy committee to guide the selection process.
In 1987, at the behest of Indiana, the committee added the existing Gary airport to the potential site list. Then, in 1988, based on their study, the policy committee announced they had decided on the four best candidate sites. They were Gary, Kankakee and Peotone in Illinois and a bi-state site overlapping the Illinois/Indiana state line west of Cedar Lake.
The turning point…
This map, from the Calumet City Star, shows the locations of the four sites recommended by the policy committee in 1988, plus Mayor Daley’s 1990 Lake Calumet proposal.
Then, in 1990, came a turning point. Richard J. Daley’s son, Richard M., was now mayor of Chicago. He threw a monkey wrench into the proceedings by unveiling a proposal, based on results of his administration’s own “study”, for a site on Chicago’s Southeast side, to be referred to as the Lake Calumet Airport site. Things suddenly got contentious.
It has been argued that Daley’s Lake Calumet proposal was never really serious; that the numbers in the study recommending Lake Calumet had no basis in reality; that the human and environmental costs would never be overcome. Rather, it has been suggested that Hizzoner feared something he was not willing to accept, that the policy committee and public opinion were getting too close to choosing the Peotone sight, and Daley was hoping to scuttle the whole selection process to prevent that from happening. Chicago wanted the authority to control the money and jobs a new airport would bring, and that meant building it within its city limits.
The Lake Calumet airport would be built in and around Hegewisch, South Deering, Burnham and Calumet City. It would shut down the existing Gary Airport to clear air space, and it called for the demolition of thousands of homes and businesses.
Infighting began in earnest. Indiana’s governor, Evan Bayh, along with senator Richard Lugar, demanded “fair and equal treatment” in the new decision making process. The State of Indiana hired a consultant to boost Gary’s chances. Lugar criticized Bayh for having taken part in the process that was stacking things in Illinois’ favor.
Mayor Daley faced a barrage of attacks from residents of Chicago as well as from its Southeast suburbs and from Northwest Indiana. Hammond passed a resolution opposing both the Lake Calumet and Gary plans. If this was Daley’s “Operation Chaos” plan, it was working.
The piece de resistance…
Whoa!
Now, one of Lake Calumet Airport’s runways was to end mere blocks from Hammond’s city limits, pointing directly at Roby. Two others actually extended over the state line into North Hammond, wiping out Pulaski (formerly Douglas) Park and scores of neighboring homes. Planes taking off or landing on these two runways would pass right over Wolf Lake, George Lake, Robertsdale and Whiting.
Dozens of organizations fought to ensure Daley’s airport would never be built in their back yards. Suburban mayors’ groups, sportsmen, anti-noise advocates, environmentalists and concerned home owners worked together in a loose anti-airport coalition. The key argument to oppose the plan, made to many lawmakers, was Lake Calumet’s destruction of the homes of tens of thousands of people and the loss of many good-paying jobs.
A done deal? Not so fast…
A February, 1992 front page headline in the Chicago Sun-Times declared, “Airport Deal Set.” Illinois governor Jim Edgar announced that he was convinced the Lake Calumet airport was “buildable”, and urged his appointees on the airport policy committee to vote in favor of it, which they did, saying it was now their number one choice. Meanwhile, about a half million Northwest Indiana and South Chicago suburban Illinoisans said, “Not so fast!” David was not ready to toss in the towel in the fight against Goliath.
Locally, NUA, “No Urban Airport”, was among the groups leading the fight. The coalition of anti-airport opposition groups continued their fight, and in June of that year convinced the Illinois State Senate to disapprove the committee’s choice. In July, Mayor Daley capitulated, saying Lake Calumet Airport was, “dead, dead, dead.”
Times of Northwest Indiana editorial cartoon.
Refusing to take Daley’s word for it, the NUA, Hammond and Whiting citizens vowed to continue resistance until the Lake Calumet plan was not just dead, but buried. Thousands of people threw their support behind Indiana Attorney General Lindley Pearson’s bid to unseat Governor Evan Bayh, because of Bayh’s support of the Lake Calumet site. Whiting Mayor Robert Bercik said elected leaders must honor the comments of its citizens.
Times Of Northwest Indiana photo.
In 1992, the final entry in Whiting’s 4th of July parade was made up of airport opponents, said to number several thousand people, marching and shouting their opposition.
In August the F.A.A. finally backed away, saying it would be up to state and local officials to revive any future, third Chicago airport plans. The Lake Calumet Airport was now, indeed, “dead, dead, dead.” In the decades since, more consultants have been hired, and more millions have been spent on new studies and proposals. One thing, though, seems certain. Building a third Chicago airport in our back yards in the future will be a tough row to hoe.