Compromise plan couldn’t get off the ground

by Carol Henrichs

The effort to merge two versions of a layout plan for the proposed airport near Peotone crashed and burned last week before leaving the ground.

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Chicago offered a compromise in an effort to help the governor choose a preferred layout plan. Will County officials, who favor the alternate plan, rejected the idea.

“The governor is in a pickle over the two dueling layout plans,” Jackson said in a recent press release.

 “In the spirit of compromise, ALNAC proposed to move the runway north 1,100 feet. The new alignment is one mile north of Beecher and Peotone, and one mile south of Bult Field,” Jackson said. “We've basically split the difference, and created a minimum mile-wide buffer zone all around the airport.”

But Will County rejected the compromise plan stating that such a change could delay the process. Jim Moustis, county board chairman pointed out that if there was a new layout plan, it would require a public hearing before being submitted it to the FAA. He said that could delay the plan.

IDOT submitted the two separate plans to the FAA initially but were told the agency would review only one “preferred” plan.

The difference in the two is strikingly similar except for the placement of the runway and terminal.

The ALNAC (Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission) plan was revised when a small airstrip -was purchased by Jim Bult, a businessman who built it into a what will eventually be a general aviation airport. Bult received the authority from IDOT and the FAA, despite IDOT’s recent delay in the final inspection of the runway, requested since mid-December.

The difference in the two layouts, according to Tony Molinaro, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, is the “ALNAC plan incorporates it (Bult Field). IDOT plan rips it apart.”

Molinaro said he doesn’t know if Bult Field can operate in conjunction with the state’s inaugural airport plan.

 “It depends on the footprint,” he said. “We would have to do our analysis to make it work.”

If the state plans to eliminate Bult Field, it would have to be acquired, but he said he has not seen the state’s master plan, the text that accompanies the airport layout.

The compromise offered does not bridge the other issues separating the two plans, such as governance or financing.