Will County News

  The Illinois House and Senate have passed a bill, House Bill 2531, that amends the Public-Private Agreements for the South Suburban Airport Act.   The bill amends the Act to include language defining cargo-oriented development.  The bill says that the Illinois Department of Transportation shall develop a process to obtain prequalification offers from developers.  More details here:

Filmmaker Tom Desch has documented Will County residents' fight against the proposed Peotone Airport for more than a decade.  Desch followed members of the citizen group STAND (Shut This Airport Nightmare Down) as they fought against the State of Illinois' use of eminent domain for an airport whose necessity has been argued for decades.  The State of Illinois now owns thousands of acres of land in the proposed airports footprint, including the former Bult Field, which the State of Illinois now operates as the "South Suburban Airport". Desch's film, The Field, will screen Saturday, October 17th at 4:30 p.m. in the K Building on Joliet Junior College's Main Campus.  Tickets to see the film are free, but should be reserved by calling the Box Office at 815-280-2200. Trailer for The Field: The Field: A Fight or Flight Story Trailer from House Painter Media on Vimeo .

By Ann Baskerville According to the Illinois Department of Transportation's South Suburban Airport Land Acquisition webpage , Loyola University Chicago has sold 90.72 acres to the State of Illinois for the Peotone Airport.  The parcel is located at Egyptian Trail and West Eagle Lake Road and was sold for $900,000. The land was donated to Loyola by the late Mary and Anthony Rudis , well-known conservationists and airport opponents who were some of the largest landowners in the Airport Footprint.  As this 2004 Chicago Tribune article discusses, Mr. and Mrs. Rudis donated the land without restrictions on its use. Will County News contacted Loyola for comment on the decision to sell the land and received the following response from Steve Christensen, Communications Director for Loyola: "When the University was originally notified of this bequest, we considered using the land for an ecology station. Since that time, the University acquired nearly 100 acres in Woodstock, Illi...