Decades after it was first envisioned, the South Suburban Airport is a top priority for Gov. Pat Quinn and supporters who view it as an economic engine for the area.
But the project still lacks final approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, and experts recently solicited by the Quinn administration raised serious questions about the state's plan, saying it needs a
longer runway to attract cargo carriers. It also has become an issue in the governor's race, with GOP challenger Bruce Rauner saying he's skeptical a new airport even is needed.
Having spent almost $86 million since 2001, the state still must buy more than a third of the 5,800 acres needed for a basic one-runway facility, which it hopes to expand someday to 20,000 acres. The state previously has focused on willing sellers, filing just 17 condemnation cases involving mostly absentee landowners or sellers who were looking for a better price.
The state has 11 pending condemnation cases and is preparing 13 more for filing, according to a Sept. 2 summary by the Department of Transportation, obtained by Crain's.
“Most folks would rather see an airport approved before they begin negotiations to sell property,” says Stephen Viz, an eminent domain attorney at Chicago law firm Figliulo & Silverman PC who has several clients in the Peotone area. “What happens if it isn't built?” If Mr. Rauner wins, “you don't know what a new administration's priorities are going to be.”
'BEYOND IMAGINATION'
The FAA doesn't require the state to buy the land before the airport is approved, but here's the problem: With federal funds scarce and Illinois finances up against a wall, the state needs private-sector financing of some sort. However, investors won't pay serious attention to the project until all or most of the land has been acquired.
“It's beyond imagination that a private developer would have the patience to wait out a land-acquisition process that could take years,” says Joseph Schwieterman, a transportation expert and director of DePaul University's Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development.
For some sellers, a condemnation proceeding was the best way to clear up ownership and boundary questions, given that homes and farms in the area have been handed down for several generations.
Now it's the only way left for the state to acquire land from those who don't want the airport and who just don't want to sell.
“Our intention is to fight it tooth and nail,” says Judy Ogalla, a longtime opponent of the airport project and a Republican member of the Will County board. She and her husband, Robert, have lived for 28 years on a 160-acre, family-owned farm that sits less than a mile west of where the 9,500-foot runway would go. “There's kind of a burned-out feeling, but people are still opposed.”
Opponents' hopes of fighting off condemnation may rest on the argument that the state can't acquire property because the FAA hasn't approved the plan. But one Will County judge already has rejected that contention in a case involving investor-owned farmland.
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That client chose not to appeal, according to his lawyer, Bill Ryan of Rosemont law firm Ryan & Ryan. But Mr. Ryan plans to raise the issue again in two other pending cases, arguing this time on constitutional grounds that the state can't condemn property until it's necessary for a project.
The governor held a photo opportunity last month at Bult Field, which the state purchased for $34 million after reaching an agreement with the owner, a wealthy local aviation enthusiast. The 288-acre private airstrip is within the proposed airport's initial boundaries.
On Sept. 23, IDOT officials are making a public presentation and holding private meetings with investors, airport developers and others to gather ideas on public-private partnerships or other alternatives to taxpayer funding. An IDOT spokesman declines to identify the participants but says they include “some firms that are internationally known.”
“We're going to participate in the process, having spent six years in the process already,” says David Sigman, executive vice president of LCOR Inc., a real estate developer in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.
A single runway and associated facilities would cost nearly $400 million, not counting the cost of land, according to a rough estimate by Mr. Sigman.
LCOR backed the airport plan of former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Chicago, who almost singlehandedly pushed the idea for many years and feuded with Will County. The state took control of the project last year, around the time Mr. Jackson went to prison for misuse of campaign funds.
It remains to be seen whether other investors are ready to put money into the plan.
Airport privatization expert Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, a free-market think tank in Los Angeles, says “Peotone never came up” at two airport industry conferences on public-private partnerships he has attended in the past two years. “A number of potential projects were talked about—overseas, San Juan—but not a word about Peotone.”
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