What Became of Chicago’s Shuttered Meigs Field? The Answers Offer Lessons for Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport
CHICAGO, Illinois – Out past Soldier Field, beyond the Field Museum and east of Shedd Aquarium, there’s a little used park that offers some terrific views of the city.
If you didn’t know the property’s fascinating history, you might not guess what was on this land before it became a park.
Welcome to Northerly Island Park, former home of Chicago’s controversial Meigs Field airport.
The small lakefront airport is probably best known not for what it provided the city when it was open, but for the audacious way in which it was closed.
It might also offer a lesson for Cleveland officials, who are debating the possibility of closing Burke Lakefront Airport.
History of Meigs Field
Meigs Field operated as a single-runway airport from 1948 to 2003, offering easier access to downtown than the city’s two main airports, Chicago O’Hare and Midway.
For years starting in the 1980s, leaders in Chicago contemplated the closure of the airfield, which initially was designated to be a park.
Then, in the dark of night on March 30, 2003, Mayor Richard M. Daley famously ordered city crews to bulldoze giant X’s onto the runway, rendering it unusable.
The airport has been closed ever since.
In 2015, the city of Chicago debuted a 120-acre park on the space, calling it Northerly Island Park.
It is a minimally developed park, especially compared to more famous public gathering spaces in Chicago, including Millennium Park and Grant Park.
Central features of Northerly Island Park include a small Lake Michigan beach, and a paved path that winds through rolling hills, prairie grasses and alongside a large pond.
There’s also Huntington Bank Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater with seating for 30,000.
On a recent overcast afternoon, the park was sparsely populated with two dozen or so visitors, including walkers, runners, a couple of bicyclists and a small group at 12th Street Beach.
“A lot of people don’t know about this park,” said Asya Hill, who lives nearby and was walking through the park on a recent Saturday.
Hill, who is 29, was 8 when the airport closed and said she doesn’t remember it. But she’s grateful for what replaced it. “It’s so quiet here,” she said. “It’s so serene. All you hear is the water.”
Comparisons to Burke
Cleveland officials, meanwhile, promise they are not contemplating a Daley-style move to close Burke.
They are, however, taking the first steps toward closing the small airport, which opened in 1947.
Last month, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s office released two studies that consider the possibility of closing the downtown airport. One looks at a potential closure’s effect on aviation operations in the region; the other considers the economic impact of closing the facility, as well as several potential uses for the land, including turning it into a park.
In addition, last week, Bibb revealed that the city had offered part of the airport property to the Haslam Sports Group for a relocated Cleveland Browns stadium, an offer that was rejected by the owners of the football team.
At 445 acres, Burke is considerably larger than 120-acre Northerly Island, which perhaps gives Cleveland officials more options for development.
In recent interviews, Bonnie Teeuwen, chief operating officer for Bibb, reiterated that no decision had been made about Burke, which has seen a steady decrease in operations over the decades.
If a decision is made to close Burke, Cleveland would work hand in hand with the Federal Aviation Administration to make sure the city followed all federal rules and regulations.
“We have assured the FAA that we aren’t going to bulldoze the runway overnight,” she said.
Read more: Cleveland chamber chief calls for ‘urgent’ closure of Burke Lakefront Airport
The city of Chicago was fined a relatively modest $33,000 for not giving the FAA the required 30-day notice to shut down an airport. The FAA has since increased the maximum allowable fine in response to the Daley incident.
Chicago also had to repay $1 million in federal airport improvement funds that it improperly used to demolish the airfield.
At the time, Daley said the closure was necessary in part to protect the city from a terrorist attack – this happened less than two years after the September 11 attacks – although federal homeland security officials disputed that account.
In hindsight, Daley’s action has been viewed as an act of extreme mayoral hubris.
“He ruined Meigs because he wanted to, because he could,” wrote long-time Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass in 2011.
The airport, in its last year of full operations, saw a total of 32,000 flight operations, most of them private charter operations, according to FAA data. That compares to 37,769 at Burke Lakefront.
Meanwhile, it took more than a decade from its closure to convert the airport into a park.
The park is located within walking distance of downtown – though admittedly it’s a long walk, about a mile southeast of Grant Park.
The park was initially proposed as part of the 1909 Plan of Chicago, architect Daniel Burnham’s grand vision for the city, which also included new civic buildings and grander, wider roadways. ( Burnham, a key architect of Cleveland’s Group Plan in the early 1900s, also developed a grand plan for Cleveland.)
Initially, Northerly Park was envisioned as one of several in a chain of island parks, but it was the only one built, completed in 1925 with landfill dredged from the lake.
In 1930, Adler Planetarium opened at the northern tip of the island; Shedd Aquarium, located just west of the island, opened that same year. In 1933, the island hosted A Century of Progress, the city’s second big world’s fair (the first was in 1893).
Then, in 1945, city officials offered the land as headquarters for the nascent United Nations, but the building went to New York City.
Finally, in 1948, a previous proposal to convert the property into an airport took shape. An air-traffic control tower was built in 1952, and a terminal building was added in 1961.
Starting in the 1980s, however, city officials in Chicago started to talk about reverting the land back to its original intent.
In 2015, the Chicago Park District, working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, unveiled the new park, which cost just over $10 million to develop.
“Wildlife, including many species of birds, has seen a resurgence in the welcoming setting that is designed for them to thrive,” said park spokeswoman Irene Tostado.
The property has had a few challenges, however.
Erosion on the eastern (lake) side of the island has led to the closure of a portion of the walking trail. In addition, the old airport terminal, converted to a park visitor center and fieldhouse, has been closed for nearly a year due to a fire.
Traffic to the concert venue, meanwhile, often blocks access to the park on performance nights.
Lee Bey, the architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, believes much more could be done with the property.
“As a park, it’s OK, but just that,” Bey wrote in a column earlier this year. “In reality, Northerly Island should be an absolutely stunning urban recreational space on par with Millennium Park. Instead, it’s the architectural equivalent of Felix and Oscar, with a 30,000-seat concert venue on its north end, oddly coupled with a nature preserve on the southern side.”
In 2010, Chicago architecture firms Studio Gang and SmithGroup drew up plans for a more spectacular park, including smaller barrier islands, a large amphitheater, plus spaces for camping, kayaking – even scuba diving.
A more recent plan, in 2022, called for the installation of bridges to make the park more accessible and turning the visitor center into a “Great Lakes Climate Lab.”
However, current Mayor Brandon Johnson has no plans to pursue additional developments at the park, according to recent reports. “Past proposals for more extensive developments at Northerly would come at great cost and further burden to taxpayers,” a park spokesperson told the Chicago Tribune last month.
That’s just fine with Aysa Hill, the 29-year-old Chicago native who was enjoying the park on a recent Saturday. She said she likes Northerly Island Park just the way it is.
“It’s nice and hidden,” she said. “You forget you’re in the city.”
If you go: Northerly Island Park, Chicago
Where: 1521 S. Linn White Drive, on the lakefront, southeast of downtown Chicago, just south of Adler Planetarium.
What: A 119-acre city of Chicago park, with a live-music venue, small beach and trails for walking and biking.
More information: chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/northerly-island-park
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