Meigs Field (CGX), Chicago, Illinois: 10 years after Daley's Meigs Field raid, the makeover of Northerly Island is slow to take shape - People are wondering whether the land was put to proper use

One of the last planes to leave Meigs Field takes off in 2003. Sixteen planes were stranded at Meigs after workers tore up the runway. 

(Phil Velasquez, Chicago Tribune)

Ten years ago as Mayor Richard M. Daley worked through political channels to accelerate federal approval to build new runways at the airport his father had dearly called "O'Hara," the mayor also issued an infamous order to destroy Chicago's little lakefront airport.

Starting late on March 30 and ending in the very early hours of March 31, 2003, bulldozers escorted by Chicago police rumbled onto Meigs Field, gouged X-shaped trenches in the north-south runway and cut access to taxiways. The only objective witnesses to what some critics labeled a crime were some sleepy sea gulls among 16 planes stranded on the field.

To prevent the secret operation from being recorded, a city firetruck trained a spotlight at the lens of an Internet camera positioned at the nearby Adler Planetarium. Unusual radio chatter so early in the morning alerted the news media that something was up, but they were kept away.

Al Capone. The Stockyards. Pan-style pizza. And the Daley dynasty that could pull off the "Meigs Massacre." They are all among the icons depicting what Chicago looks and smells like to the rest of the world.

The aesthetics are slowly changing on Northerly Island, a 4,500-foot-long peninsula that was constructed in the 1920s and originally was supposed to be the northernmost in a string of islands envisioned by architect and city planner Daniel H. Burnham in his Plan of Chicago of 1909. But the rest of the atoll was never built.

Merrill C. Meigs Field opened there in December 1948, named for the publisher of the Chicago Herald and Examiner. By 1955, it became the busiest single-runway airport in the U.S.

Though Daley had long wanted to close Meigs and turn Northerly Island into a park, he gave a different reason for the runway destruction at the time, saying he was trying to reduce any airborne threat against downtown buildings "in these very uncertain times" — only a year and a half after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After Meigs was closed, park enthusiasts set out to realize Daley's vision, and the Chicago Park District took initial steps to transform the empty peninsula. The area was landscaped with about 400 trees and more than 30 acres of prairie grass. The old airport terminal building was converted into a visitor center, which houses the park's nature center and bird hospital.

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Meigs Field (CGX), Chicago, IL:  http://www.airfields-freeman.com