Daley Won’t Try to Revive Plan for Chicago Airport

Mayor Richard M. Daley, his controversial plan to build a third Chicago airport shot down by the Illinois Legislature, has angrily declared the project dead and vowed that he won’t resurrect it.

The $10.8-billion airport, potentially the nation’s largest public works project, had been touted as a mammoth engine to revitalize Chicago’s declining southeast side and generate thousands of jobs. It was one of several ambitious projects Daley had championed in a bid to dramatically reshape the city, much as his father, the late mayor Richard J. Daley, did during his 21-year reign.

The current mayor blamed lack of leadership by Republican Gov. Jim Edgar for the failure of the Illinois General Assembly to enact a key measure creating a regional airport authority.

Still expressing his anger Thursday, Daley told reporters that even if the General Assembly takes up the issue and approves it in its next session, the city of Chicago will not participate in building it.

“It’s dead,” he repeated.

Edgar refused to accept that judgment, saying he hoped the measure would be approved. Legislative leaders--including some who opposed the airport--said they also suspected the measure would reappear.

And in the blue-collar communities on Chicago’s southeast side--communities that would be obliterated by the new airport--residents were ecstatic at their neighborhoods’ apparent reprieve, but also mistrustful, fearing that the issue would return when the General Assembly reconvenes in November.

But Daley insisted that he wasn’t bluffing. “Sometimes in life you have to face reality,” he said Wednesday. “We’re facing reality. The bill is dead.”

After passing the Illinois House, the airport bill came within five votes of approval in a midnight vote in the Senate Tuesday night. Daley accused Edgar of not trying hard enough to get Republican support for the measure.

Some key Senate leaders opposed the airport because they did not like the site, a declining industrial area near Lake Calumet that would have required the destruction of thousands of homes, the loss of hundreds of acres of federally protected wetlands and a massive toxic waste cleanup. Even if the General Assembly had approved the measure, the airport proposal still would have had to endure a gantlet of lawsuits and the scrutiny of federal regulators.

Daley’s father, America’s preeminent big-city political boss, wielded enormous influence in the state Capitol. Working with Republican governors, he pretty much was able to set the agenda in Springfield. His son, however, has run smack into present-day political and economic realities.

“You just don’t make a phone call any more and have these things happen,” Edgar said as he continued to hold out hope that the airport proposal can be revived next session.

“I’m still not yet ready to give up on Lake Calumet, but I can’t do it by myself,” he said Thursday. “If the mayor is serious about (giving up), I would say that it’s dead.”