Mayor Daley says Harrison Ford should keep his trap shut about the 7-years-old shuttering of lakefront airport Meigs Field.
Ford, who was in town promoting his latest film “Extraordinary Measures,” reiterated his fury over the mayor’s 2003 decision to send bulldozers to the airfield and carve an X into the runway.
“I'm still livid about it,” said Ford, an avid aviator who piloted a plane into Midway this week, to the Sun-Times’ Bill Zwecker. He called the decision "unthinkable."
The mayor on Wednesday fired back at the iconic actor, and Maine East alum.
“He’s a multi-millionaire. He can fly anyplace he wants in the country. This guy’s a multi-millionaire and you’re listening to him. ... He doesn’t live in Chicago,” the mayor said Wednesday.
“I don’t want to call him elitist, but it is. He has a jet. He has all these planes and all these toys. And he doesn’t understand this economy is tough with people and that lakefront belongs to us. ... They’d love to privatize the whole lakefront for a few people. That’s not the history of Chicago. ... He should read the Burnham Plan.”
The 2003 destruction of Meigs Field didn’t come cheap for the city. The Daley administration ended up paying $33,000 in fines and was forced to repay a $1 million federal airport development grants.
Northerly Island, where Meigs once operated, is scheduled to become a nature center and camp ground for inner city kids.
