Former Mayor Jane Byrne Tuesday called on the city to begin an immediate study on the feasibility of building a third major airport on the site of the partially abandoned U.S. Steel South Works property on the Southeast Side.
Byrne said a new airport, possibly to be named after the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, would dramatically rejuvenate the economy of the city`s Southeast Side and northwestern Indiana and provide as many as 30,000 new jobs.
During a news conference in her campaign office, Byrne, the only announced candidate for mayor in the 1987 election, said that although O`Hare International Airport is undergoing a major expansion, it will be operating nearly at capacity by the time the project is completed.
”O`Hare airport, even after its expansion, will reach its capacity by the turn of the century,” Byrne said. ”New runways canot be added without major environmental problems.”
Byrne said airplane takeoffs and landings at a Southeast Side airport could be routed over Lake Michigan, reducing noise pollution over residential areas.
”If correctly planned, such an airport can help expand lakefront parks and recreational facilities from 79th Street to the Indiana Dunes,” she said. The former mayor said the City of Chicago should immediately apply for a portion of a $500,000 grant appropriated by the state legislature earlier this year as part of the Build Illinois capital improvement program for an airport feasibility study in the Chicago area. Byrne said a third major airport would not compete with air traffic at Midway Airport or O`Hare.
”The City of Chicago is not taking advantage of these new opportunities for creating one of the most important economic development projects of the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st Century,” Byrne said.
She said the airport might be named after Daley, her political mentor, because she had been told that some members of Daley`s family feel that no fitting memorial has been designated for him since his death in 1976.
Byrne said she has not discussed the possibility of a new airport with airline officials, who probably would be asked to help finance construction.
”That`s what a feasibility study would have to determine,” she said when asked who would pay for a new airport.
Informed of Byrne`s announcement, Mayor Harold Washington told reporters, ”We`ll look into it.”
However, he said, he doubted if there was a need for a third major airport in Chicago.
The expansion of O`Hare and Midway, he said, ”will more than accommodate the needs of the city into the 21st Century. Apparently, she had a hard time making news today.”
Byrne denied that her call for a new airport on the South Works property at 89th Street and the lakefront was an attempt to upstage Ald. Edward Vrdolyak (10th), an often mentioned possible mayoral candidate, whose 10th Ward is south of the site.
”This isn`t political,” she said.
The South Works complex, which once provided jobs for 10,000, now employs about 900.
During her news conference, Byrne also was critical of Washington for his charges that he inherited a budget deficit from her when he took office. She said the mayor has cited budget deficit figures ranging from $94 million to $150 million.
In fact, she said, there was only a $15.6 million deficit, and that would not have existed if Washington had carried out her plans to sell city-owned real estate and cable television franchises.
”He has trouble keeping track of his stories because they`re not true,” Byrne said. ”With no record to run on, his strategy is to attack.”
City Budget Director Sharon Gist Gilliam said Byrne`s claim that there was no major budget deficit was ”hogwash.”
”She has raised smoke and mirrors to its highest art,” said Gilliam, whom Byrne fired as the city consumer services commissioner, one of her first acts as mayor in 1979. ”The deficit this administration inherited was, is and always shall be $94.5 million in the corporate budget.
”You simply cannot change history through some desire to rewrite it two years later to your own liking,” she said.
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