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Without a Plan in Place, Chicago Breaks Ground on Airport Number Three

April 25, 2012 at 9:05 AM | by | Comment (1)

Chicago’s getting a brand new airport! It’s number three to be exact, and they broke ground on it over the weekend. Just hold up a second first, because though the ground's been dug with a celebratory shovel, the plans are still all on paper with plenty of arguments and debates left before planes will be able to do their thing to someplace other than ORD and MDW.

Mostly the concern is that Chicago doesn’t really need a brand new airport, and opponents especially feel that all the city needs is updates at Chicago-O’Hare. Even the CEO over at the new United feels that another airport isn’t really necessary, but of course that could be simply because he has a pretty decent stake in the operations at O’Hare.

Even with the debate still ongoing there was a little bit of a groundbreaking ceremony over the weekend, as Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. was on hand to turn over some soil in the city of Peotone. The state’s governor—Pat Quinn—seems to be onboard with the plan too, but even he wasn’t in attendance at the new airport party.

For now it sounds like airport number three will exist solely in discussions, and of course there needs to be a decision about where the money is coming from and who will eventually be in charge of the new airport. Obviously we love ourselves some new airport smell, but we totally think they might have jumped the gun with the whole groundbreaking ceremony.

[Photo of some different shovels: North Charleston]

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PR stunt, nothing more

Good call--as Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s publicity stunt was indeed premature. Consider that not only did he jump the gun, he may have jumped the shark with this one...What wasn't revealed here is that at the same time as the fake groundbreaking, there was also an anti-airport rally attended by hundreds of people who have been fighting this unnecessary project since 1987...BTW, considering Milwaukee's Mitchell Field and the Gary/Chicago Airport, Jesse's dream project would be a sixth airport.

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