Business View Magazine November-December 2018

74 75 CHICAGO EXECUTIVE AIRPORT the State of Illinois for capital improvements.“In October 2006,we changed the name of the Airport from Palwaukee to Chicago Executive Airport to better reflect our role in the national airspace sys- tem,which is corporate aviation, and relieving the Chicago airspace system of corporate and training aircraft fromO’Hare (International Airport).” Chicago Executive is self-sufficient; receiving no tax dollars to fund operations, something Abbott says is a rarity among GA airports.The Airport Man- agers Office has about 12 full-time employees, but bumps that number up to 14 or 16, seasonally.“It’s a pretty small staff and we do a lot with the staff that we have,”Abbott remarks.“The Airport as a whole, the FBOs and the corporate flight departments, and so forth- I believe they employ about 300 people.” According to Abbott, Chicago Executive Airport’s chief GA competitors are of the friendly type and both located in the metro area: Waukegan Nation- al Airport to the north and, to the west,DuPage Airport.All three serve to complement the entire Chicago aviation system. “Where we have the advantage of the other two airports is really in our location,”Abbott explains. “We are adjacent to I-294,which is the toll-way that goes around Chicago,with another expressway nearby, and we’re only 20 miles, as the crowflies, from the Loop in downtown Chicago. So, if you’re doing business on the north side of Chicago or downtown, it really is the GA airport of choice for people coming to Chicago for business.Waukegan is a little far north and DuPage is far west.They both have longer runways, but nobody can beat our loca- tion close to the North Shore and downtown.” Chicago Executive management is in the midst of planning for the aviation requirements of the ever-evolving flight industry. Revision of the rough- ly 30-year-old Master Plan has been underway for several years and is now in its final phase. “Now,we’re going to start looking at alternative infrastructure configurations at the Airport,” says Abbott.“So,we take the forecasts and the facility requirements for what’s going to be required for aircraft over the next 20 to 30 years and we start looking at infrastructure.We start looking at ramps and building new hangars and runway configura- tions. Do we need to reconfigure runways? Do we need to lengthen a runway to stay relevant to busi- ness aviation? 5,000 feet is really the minimum for business aviation; it’s 5,000 feet or greater. “So,we’re going to be looking at all that. It’s really a comprehensive effort involving the communities and the public,”he adds.“We’re going to ramp up the public involvement piece. It’s going to take a year, a year and a half to get this done. But it’s really the last push and the end result of this master plan will be an updated airport layout plan that really will give us a picture on paper of what this Airport should look like in the next 20 to 30 years.That’s something we’re pretty excited to continue and get wrapped up.” A second major project is also on the drawing board: constructing a newCustoms building be- cause the current facility doesn’t meet U.S. Customs