Daley Going Down

But the fine people of Chicago got such a nice garden out of the deal

Sounds like business as usual??? It's certainly no different than the way his daddy ran the city but someone, sooner or later, was going to have to answer for it. Some would call this poetic justice.

I'll bet not, generally big city mayors are well insolated from this sort of chicanery. It looks like a brush back to me.

Meigs is dead. Long live Meigs.

I always knew there was something I didn't like about Chicago.

They can't touch Daley. Isn't there a city city ordinance or state law or something that says the Mayor of Chicago has to be named Daley? Reason Jane Byrne is no longer mayor is 'cuz she wouldn't change her name. If she had, she probably would've been afraid to move into the Mother Cabrini housing project; I don't think the name of Daley is all that popular in the 'hood.

It's my understanding that Daley Jr. has made a few gains in the 'hood. He's not viewed as a big bad plantation massa like his daddy was. He even moved out of Bridgeport.

Re: Daley Going Down

What is this strange affection that out-of-towners have for Meigs Field? I am baffled.

Meigs was a national treasure amongst the aviation community. Even good old Microsoft Flight Simulator took off from Meigs. You used to get a lot of retail business from Michigan from people who flew in for a day, and took a cab downtown. No more.

With all due respect, that is pure baloney. The economic impact of closing Meigs was tiny, infinitesimal compared with the Chicago economy as a whole. O'Hare probably handles more passengers in a day than Meigs handled in a year. And the regular busloads of Iowans and Wisconsinites probably contribute more to the economy than Meigs ever did.

That's what I thought??? I've been away from Chicago for several years now but when did Meigs Field become such an economic plus? As joe said, O'Hare handles more people in an hour...and Midway does as well.

Midway is just plain scarey . . . or once was. We landed there in 1968, and taxied past this huge fueling facility, right in the middle of all the taxiways. Convinced me never to book a flight through there again.

The premise of this thread is so damned silly . . .

Say, didn't they have a mayor once who wasn't part of the Irish Democratic Machine? What was that joker's name . . . Cormick, Tarmac . . . oh yeah, Anton Cermak . . . hell, they shot his ass, though . . . never mind . . .

What was the point of demoing Meigs? I mean, now you have another nice waterfront garden that you can only use six months out of the year.

As opposed to an airport used by only a tiny fraction of the city's populace?

The fact is that the city owns Northerly Island, upon which Meigs Field was located. Meigs had a 50-year lease from the Chicago park district; the lease expired in 1996. According to the city's master plan, the entire lakefront should be devoted to public space and parkland. Meigs was an aberration; it violated the plan, it shouldn't have been built on the lakefront in the first place. After a few extensions of the lease, some court fights, and an abortive political compromise, the city finally took what was its own land all along.

No disrespect but to hell with Meigs Field. What I can't believe is the threat of Marshall Field's possibly becoming Macy's. Now THAT would be an abomination.

The Trib was trying to nail Daley's ass to the wall when I lived there seven years ago. Seems like every week they came up with something new, and the guy never so much as flinched. I'd never shed a tear for the SOB, but this sure as hell wouldn't be the first storm he weathered.

I do sympathize, eoe. Boston's venerable Jordan Marsh has been Macy's now for several years. And the most recent bad news is that, right across the street, the almost equally venerable Filene's will soon also be a Macy's. It's Walmartization of America.

But Daley has nothing to do with Marshall Fields. He was the one, however, who ordered the destruction of Meigs in the middle of the night. The last time I was at MF's it looked like Bloomingdales anyway.