Another local airport bites the dust

"Local" being Chicago area burbs.
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southt...ws/271abn5.htm

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All that's left of Howell-New Lenox Airport are empty hangars, vacant
runways, a tattered windsock and memories.

The airport at Schoolhouse and Laraway roads notified the Illinois
Department of Transportation it closed down for good Aug. 1.
Construction is expected to begin this year on a new subdivision at the
spot where planes landed and took off.

For Mokena's Jim Smetana and the 60 or so pilots who were based at the
airfield, the closing means the end of another neighborhood airport.

Smetana, an American Airlines pilot, said young airmen are losing a
place to earn their wings.

"It is just one more thing to make it difficult to fly," said Smetana,
who stored his Cessna at the airport. "I could take my neighbor kids
for rides. Now I can't do that."

But the fate of the only airport in New Lenox is not unusual.

In the past 50 years, general aviation airports open to the public have
been plowed under in Hinsdale, Chicago Heights, Oak Lawn and LaGrange.

A Best Buy and an Office Depot sit on a former airport in Crestwood. In
the heart of Chicago, Meigs Field was shut down by Mayor Richard Daley
in 2003 for conversion to Northerly Island park. A private airport in
nearby Frankfort closed its runways to the public in the past five
years.