Chicago Neighborhood Wrecked for O'Hare's Hoped-For New Runway

Money talks, but neighborhood is destroyed, to make way for airport expansion -- maybe

I have no affection for O'Hare International Airport (ORD) and try very hard to avoid connecting there -- especially in winter. So I see the upside to a new runway, part of a proposed $15 billion makeover of this busy, congested and inefficient airport. The plan is to replace the congestion-prone model of intersecting runways with a modern parallel runway design. However, I probably won't live long enough to see it completed. The operative word is "proposed," because there is not yet a timetable or a guarantee of funding. As the Chicago Tribune reported (along with a sad picture):

"The remnants of a laundromat and a fast-food restaurant known in the Bensenville neighborhood for its tasty hot dogs fell like matchsticks to O'Hare International Airport's expansion plans on Wednesday.  It took only minutes for the walls and roof to tumble on a commercial building that also housed two other businesses.

"A pair of backhoes armed with claws called munchers'" ripped down the brick exterior of the first of about 500 buildings in the northwest suburb that will leveled. The demolitions are set to make way for the final new runway planned in Chicago's $15 billion overhaul of O'Hare. Dust from the teardown, at 439 E. Irving Park Road, seemed to swirl together with clouds of doubt over the prospects of Chicago completing the massive project, especially with the airline industry in financial turmoil.

"Bensenville Village President Frank Soto acknowledged there are no guarantees the runway will be built. Soto late last year accepted a $16 million payment to the village from Chicago along with other enticements in exchange for Bensenville dropping its decades-long opposition to O'Hare expansion.

"Asked by a reporter Wednesday whether he would object to other uses of the more than 400 acres in Bensenville that Chicago acquired under eminent domain rules if O'Hare expansion were retooled, Soto said: 'We wouldn't mind not having a runway there.'"

So help me understand this. Bensenville's Frank Soto accepted a $16 million payoff to stop opposing an airport expansion that might not happen -- at least not soon. For Chicago, which hopes to modernize it's airport, 16 mill is a small investment in what might be a $15 billion mega-project (or higher, since big construction projects rarely comes on time and under budget). I don't know how much, if anything, people got as compensation for losing their homes or bsuinesses. Unless my arithmetic is way off (which it could be), the payment to Bensenville came to less than $27,000 per vacated and wrecked building.

So the neighborhood was wrecked for an uncertain airport future. Meanwhile, vacated Bensonville buildings south of the airport. According to the press release, "Since last fall, the CDA [Chicago Department of Aviation] has worked with the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) to provide a unique, hands-on multi-agency training in the now vacant, acquired properties in the Village of Bensenville. The area has been used as a multi-agency training ground for safety and security agencies including the U. S. Department of Justice, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Chicago Police Department, the Chicago Fire Department, the Village of Bensenville, and many city, county, state, federal and assist agencies." Click here for the official press release.