The motorist plying unfamiliar territory on West Harrison or South Canal Streets in Chicago, Laramie Avenue in Alsip or Golf Road in Schaumburg probably isn’t expecting to encounter any other vehicles than cars, trucks and vans.
But, as if from nowhere, comes the staccato chop of an airborne visitor. The sound surges closer, appears to be directly overhead, then starts to fade. Only then does the helicopter become visible, gliding down for a perfect landing not a block away.
What the unsuspecting driver has just discovered is another of the Chicago area’s many heliports. It may be a state-of-the-art illuminated port used for dozens of flights a week or a no-frills concrete square with weeds poking through the cracks. It may be a place for visiting executives to set down, or a lifesaving link between an accident site and a medical center.
Whatever its use, this landing pad is certain to be an essential tool of the company, hospital or village that owns it.
From Waukegan down to Joliet, heliports abound. According to Gary Stevens, flight safety coordinator for the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Division of Aeronautics in Springfield, there are more than 150 heliports in Chicago and vicinity, including 56 in Cook County alone.
Cook County’s include 32 restricted landing area heliports that are privately owned and operated, usually by corporations, and 23 hospital heliports used for emergency medical service.
The county has only one “general access” heliport: the Schaumburg Municipal Helistop, which has been used by everyone from Gov. Jim Edgar to “occasional recreational users,” said Tom Dabareiner, senior transportation planner for the village.
The busiest heliport in the Chicago area? According to Stevens, that almost certainly is the Bank of America Illinois Heliport at 800 South Canal St., southwest of the Loop.
One block south of Chicago’s main post office and just a few blocks west of the bank, the heliport has been the site of 66,000 takeoffs and landings since it opened in 1981.
Bank of America Illinois, formerly Continental Bank, maintains the heliport and its three Bell 206 choppers because helicopter transport is the most efficient way for the bank to service its large check-processing business.
“Time is money,” said Bank of America Illinois spokesman Bill Murschel, who explained that the bank capitalizes on its Midwest location to process checks for banks and corporate customers nationwide. “What these copters do is get to the airport on time.”
According to Tim Walinski, the bank’s manager of helicopter operations, expressways offer no guarantee that checks will reach O’Hare International and Midway Airports in time to meet courier flights.
“Bad weather, accidents and other delays on the expressways all contributed to the bank’s desire to use helicopters to meet the flights,” said Walinski.
Barring weather that grounds the choppers, Walinski said, the helicopters can fly to O’Hare and Midway in nine and six minutes, respectively. “They’re very predictable in terms of the time it takes to make those trips,” he said.
Originally at street level, the heliport now stands atop a 35-foot-high aluminum deck, built in accordance with glide path requirements after the announcement that a new post office would be constructed next door.
Measuring 50 feet by 50 feet, the landing surface is concrete with an asphalt perimeter. The heliport is equipped with lights for night operations and is electronically de-iced in the winter.
Walinsky said the heliport’s personnel are proud of their “neighborly” reputation in the area.
“We’ve amassed 18,000 flight hours since 1981 with a great deal of professionalism and without causing any undue attention,” he said. “It’s gotten to the point where people don’t even look anymore.”
That’s not so in Schaumburg, where there’s an average of only 10 to 12 helicopter landings and takeoffs a week, said Dabareiner.
The Helistop, at 1050 E. American Lane, about one-half mile west of Woodfield Mall, is a 25-foot-square concrete pad surrounded by sod and landing lights on 2 1/2 acres. With lights for night operations, the Helistop is adjoined by a 12 1/2-by-25-foot parking pad.
The Helistop was built in 1989 to lure companies considering relocating in Schaumburg. “The intent was to construct a heliport to serve the busy executive,” said Dabareiner. “It’s an amenity largely for the business community.”
Dabareiner added that though some larger area corporations with heliports occasionally use the Helistop, it primarily serves smaller companies that require helicopter travel.
The area in and around Schaumburg is a hotbed of heliports, with several companies owning their own pads. One is at Barrington’s Rose Packing Co., a 72-year-old meat processing firm.
“There are four heliports within four miles here,” said company President Bill Rose, who flies his own Bell 206B Jet Ranger. “We have one, Ameritech has one a mile east, Allstate has one a mile west, and Sears has one three miles west of here.”
Rose, who holds a commercial pilot’s license and has been flying since 1952, also has two other pads: one at a Rose Packing plant near Midway Airport and the third at a plant at 43rd Street and Ashland Avenue on the South Side.
The Barrington heliport next to his company’s offices is 50 feet square, features a brick surface similar to a patio, and stands next to a large grass area that can accommodate other copters.
Having owned and piloted his own helicopter for two decades, Rose feels it’s an essential part of his operation. “I can be at three or four places in one day and not get caught in traffic,” he said.
He added that Rose Packing also shuttles in customers by helicopter and allows other copters to land there if they have permission.
It’a pretty much the norm at all private-use heliports, said IDOT’s Stevens, that anyone can land there if they have permission. And he said emergency use of a private-use heliport is rare. “It’s extraordinary that in an emergency a helicopter would set down at a private-use heliport. They simply would set donw on any flat surface.”
In the south suburbs, the Alsip Fire Department has a heliport at its station at 120th Street and Laramie Avenue.
The 60-foot-square asphalt pad, installed when the station was constructed 19 years ago, is used when hospital helicopters and Coast Guard choppers need to set down in the village.
The port is illuminated by lights controlled from the firehouse, said Lt. Don Anderson. Pilots use a water tower just northwest of the pad as a landmark when approaching.
“When we started our paramedic units, we felt the need to have a heliport,” said Anderson. He said the proximity to the village of the Tri-State Tollway (Interstate Highway 294), the Calumet-Sag Channel (monitored by the Coast Guard) and the intersection of 127th Street and Cicero Avenue, regarded as one of the most dangerous in the state, means department paramedics see serious accidents regularly.
That fact notwithstanding, the arrival of a chopper in Alsip is not a routine event. “It runs hot and cold,” said Anderson. “We probably average about 15 landings a year.”
The unique value of the helicopter is best demonstrated by its use in emergency medicine, said IDOT’s Stevens.
“There is no quicker form of transportation than a helicopter if you’re going point to point within about a 200-mile range,” he said. “Hospital use shows helicopter capabilities better than any other area, and use of helicopters is growing faster in the hospital area than in any other.”
Moreover, Illinois leads the nation with 135 hospital heliports.
Among area hospitals, Loyola University Medical Center near Maywood may be best known for emergency helicopter service. The center’s Lifestar is a BK-117 that makes about 1,000 trips a year into and out of its parking lot heliport on the northwest side of the hospital.
Mike Eastlee, lead pilot, said the heliport is a 120-by-110-foot concrete pad that’s has lights for night use and can be automatically de-iced. A hangar with adjoining offices for the three-member Lifestar crew abuts the port.
Despite the frequent flights, Eastlee said motorists traversing nearby First Avenue near the Eisenhower Expressway shouldn’t be concerned about the Lifestar buzzing their car roofs.
“The heliport is at least a block off First Avenue,” he noted. “We’re neighborly; we’re usually about 300 feet up as we pass over First Avenue. They’ll hear us, but not necessarily see us.”
Less sophisticated is the heliport at Cook County Hospital on the Near West Side. Hospital spokeswoman Wynona Redmond said the port is a concrete square in Pasteur Park across the street from the building’s entrance at 1835 W. Harrison St.
There are reflectors on the edges of the pad, but no lights. Illumination is provided by street lights and a large luminescent “H” painted on the pad.
Patients arriving by helicopter are met by a medical team and transported into the hospital. “We get a lot of burn and trauma cases by helicopter,” said Redmond, adding that there were 54 landings at the pad from August 1993 to August 1994.
But ground-level hospital heliports are not the norm. According to Stevens, most hospital heliports, including those at Children’s Memorial Hospital and Edgewater Medical Center in Chicago, and Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park, are rooftop pads.
The newest rooftop heliport among Chicago-area hospitals is at Christ Hospital and Medical Center, 4440 W. 95th St. in Oak Lawn. Built atop the surgical pavilion, the pad was unveiled in February, when the pavilion was completed.
Dr. David Jaimovich, director of the transport program and of pediatric critical care, said the new heliport offers big advantages in convenience and patient care than did the previous one, on the northeast side of the building in a parking lot.
“The patient can now be brought down from the heliport through elevators to various intensive care units throughout the hospital via connecting bridges on the third and fourth floors,” he said.
The pad is concrete with a steel reinforcement, has lights for night use and is raised off the roof by about 20 feet. The elevators open at the same level to admit patients airlifted to Christ from hospitals in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.
Clearly, hospital heliports are, in Stevens’ words, “a matter of life and death.” But those who depend on heliports to conduct business would argue their pads are pretty important, too.
As Stevens observes: “If you can commute in 15 minutes rather than an hour, that’s priceless.”
