MICHIGAN AVENUE RESIDENTS DON’T OWN THE SKY!

At the beginning of this millennium, plans started for Children’s Memorial Hospital (founded in 1882), currently located in the Lincoln Park area of Chicago, to build a new billion dollar hospital just east of North Michigan Avenue in the complex where Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) resides. Since that is just across the street from where I live, I became very interested in the project and have followed the plans from the start. What an honor to be able to watch the growth of the hospital, which last year served more than 146,000 children, from the ground up. My elation was not shared by all of the other residents in this community called Streeterville.


Besides the worry of future traffic congestion and parking issues, (which the hospital quickly solved by planning more parking garages) residents were concerned about a heliport being planned for the roof of the complex. While people were vocally claiming, “safety issues,” I think the underlying reason was that the selfish area residents were concerned about the noise of a helicopter flying by their high-rise windows.

Because Streeterville is also the home of NMH, ambulances are in transit all day long. The background noise of sirens has become such a familiar noise I don’t even notice it. If there are 10 ambulances a day, that means 3650 times a year, the wails are emitted. Do you know how many helicopter flights the hospital does in its current location in Lincoln Park? Approximately 73 a year! That is nothing compared to the number of ambulance rides.

A hospital fact sheet tell us: 


 The heliport will be used to receive critically ill and injured children who cannot be transported by ground transportation without threat to the life or condition, and for time-critical organ transplantation.


 Heliport transports to the future rooftop heliport will be used for pediatric treatment of Children’s Memorial patients only.


 Annually, an average of 73 seriously ill or injured children and five organs for life-saving transplantation are transported by helicopter to our Lincoln Park location


 Children are only brought from other hospitals – never from the scene of accidents.


 Doctors have concluded that using an off-site heliport could result in serious harm to the child being transported because of the additional time and physical movement of the medically fragile child.


Children's Memorial Hospital, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the City of Chicago and a slew of aviation experts have done extensive studies on heliport safety. They have all concluded that the hospital’s heliport plans EXCEED any safety requirement for the operation of a heliport. Their video  clearly explains how all safety issues have been resolved.


The obvious safety of flying helicopters in this area was proven last summer when the city allowed the "Transformers" movie to have whirly birds sweeping low over Michigan Ave. I wrote about that last July:“It is interesting to note that while there has been a multi-year study, very contentious, ( still continuing) on whether a heliport should be allowed on the roof of Children’s Memorial Hospital which is currently under construction; it is perfectly acceptable for movie helicopters to be flying in the very same air space over Michigan Avenue. The hypocrisy of it!”

The reason for this story now is because the most vocal anti-heliport group, the Streeterville Organization of Active Residents (SOAR,) sent out a fund-raising letter with many misstatements about the safety of the heliport. That compelled the hospital to send out a letter refuting what SOAR had written.

The battle continues and it sickens me how selfish the residents around me are. As I have said in community meetings, “Once the heliport is built, if I hear the noise of a helicopter, it means the life of a child is being saved.”

So why are we still arguing this issue?