Expanding O’Hare International Airport would be more efficient than building a third airport at Peotone, but “we don’t have that luxury,” the state’s transportation chief said Thursday.
Kirk Brown, secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation, came to Chicago Thursday to defend Gov. Jim Edgar’s airport plan before the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, which has hinted it may reverse its support for a third airport.
Three years ago, when Lake Calumet seemed the leading site for the project, the state-created regional planning body backed the airport effort, based on projections showing increasing demand for air travel and increasing congestion at O’Hare.
Since then, however, the state-created regional planning body has produced a new regional land-use plan that blames rapid suburban sprawl for many of the region’s problems. A Peotone airport built on farm fields would only exacerbate those problems, some commissioners believe.
Brown on Thursday could not ease those concerns, arguing only that with Lake Calumet now out of the picture the state has no alternative but to build on a rural site.
But he emphasized that the project should help meet other commission goals, including keeping jobs in Chicago and bringing more employment to the south suburbs.
With O’Hare now at 93 percent of capacity and demand growing each year for air travel, the region must build a new airport or face losing its position as a key national hub and conference center, Brown said.
He predicted the region would lose at least 161,000 air-industry-related jobs by the year 2020 and would see air-travel costs rise if no third airport is built.
If the airport is built, he said, it would create 46,000 construction jobs during the first $1.9 billion stage, an estimated 10,732 permanent jobs at the facility and an additional 25,000 from support industries expected to rise around the airport.
Ruth Kretschmer, a commissioner from Du Page County, congratulated Brown on the state’s plans to acquire by 1996 the entire 20,000-acre Peotone airport site and noise-affected areas around it, to prevent noise problems like those surrounding O’Hare airport.
But Ed Smith, a Chicago alderman and commission member, questioned whether the new Clinton administration will continue to financially support the project, and whether the airlines, which do not favor a third airport, can be brought on board.
“It’s ludicrous to me to talk about building an airport when you don’t have the airlines committed,” Smith said.
“If we can’t get use agreements with the airlines, this airport won’t be built,” Brown said. “We won’t build on spec.”
Alan Cornue, a Woodstock Plan Commission member who has raised strong concerns about a rural airport at previous NIPC meetings, also questioned the efficiency for airlines of operating three airports-including Midway-in the Chicago area.
Brown acknowledged that it is “more efficient to have one airport” but “we don’t have that luxury,” he said, with expansion at O’Hare cut off by both surrounding development and strong political opposition.
But he assured Cornue that Peotone would not one day replace O’Hare entirely.
