Category: Economics

RU Alumni Scott Rosenzweig & Jeff Kressman: Starting ESG Core Advisors LLC

Corporate/Industrial ESG — Operations, Management, and Organizational Culture
RU Alumni Scott Rosenzweig, MBA ’98, Founder and CEO of ESG Core Advisors (LinkedIn profile) and Jeff Kressman, MSMC ’83, VP Marketing of ESG Core Advisors (LinkedIn profile)

This Tuesday 4/25 at 5pm CST, please join us for our third virtual Master Class on the relations between sustainability business, when we host Mr. Scott Rosenzweig (MBA ’96), Sustainability Entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of ESG Core Advisors, and sustainability consultant/strategist for mid-market companies seeking to integrate sustainability into their mission and operations. As a proud 1996 alum of RU’s Heller College of Business, Scott is highly engaged with our university in various capacities, notably serving on the HCB Advisory Board and mentoring business students as they seek out their career pathways.

Scott is a dynamic and engaging speaker who will share his compelling personal story of business and management success as well as why and how he started ESG Core Advisors to help transform and inspire corporations to lead us toward a sustainable future.

Joining Scott is his colleague and fellow RU alum Jeff Kressman (MSMC ’83), VP Marketing of ESG Core Advisors.

Zoom Login Info:

https://roosevelt.zoom.us/j/99002167623?pwd=Q3VKdndzVE1RdndEOTQzVUNpNVdZdz09
Meeting ID: 990 0216 7623
Password: 871074

This Earth Month 2023 @RooseveltU on Tuesdays we explore different aspects of the critical role of sustainability in today’s business world. Distinguished RU alumni from the Colleges of Business and Arts & Sciences are giving special guest presentations each Tuesday 5-6pm CST, in Prof. Jennifer Muryn’s MGMT 390 Contemporary Topics in Business online class. These SUST + MGMT alumni talks are open to the RU and Resilience Studies Consortium community via Zoom. Please join us!

Mitchell’s Food Mart — A Thriving Throwback in Joliet

This essay was published as an op-ed piece entitle “Mitchell’s Still Has Magic for Me” in the Joliet Herald-News, p14, on 30 December 2010. I offer it here five years later as a commentary on supporting local economies and celebrating the unique small businesses in our home towns. Gladly, business is still good!

Normally I utterly detest shopping. But a few days before Christmas when my wife noted we were running low on some staple food items, I seized the opportunity with gusto: “Great, honey! I’ll run to Mitchell’s.”

Mitchell's signA small, nondescript building with a friendly 1960s-vintage lighted sign, Mitchell’s Food Mart on Raynor Avenue in Joliet is the epitome of the small neighborhood grocery store, one run by the same family since opening sixty years ago.

Walking inside is like a journey back in time. Customers carefully guide half-size shopping carts down four or five narrow aisles packed full with meticulously arranged inventory. Each item features a little orange price tag that has been applied by hand (no UPC scanning here). The one register for checkout features a friendly and efficient employee who actually knows how to bag groceries and make proper change, both of which are lost arts.

Mitchell's street viewThe utterly delightful candy section, strategically placed alongside the checkout line, reminds me of every corner drugstore’s sweets aisle from my childhood days. It’s got a little bit of everything, much of which (in keeping with the store’s small-is-beautiful theme) is available in minute quantities. My two girls go gaga picking out five-cent Tootsies as rewards for being cooperative sidekicks.

The heart and soul of Mitchell’s, though, is the butcher counter in the back, a supremely wonderful meat-eater’s paradise (vegetarians stop reading now). The first thing I do here is grab a number, because Mitchell’s has the wisdom to use this time-honored system that is sadly neglected at most supermarket delis.

Above the lunchmeat slicers are posted the current won-loss records of Chicago’s sports teams, adjusted seasonally and updated daily. I always check the scores, then pause to regard the squadron of white-aproned butchers expertly plying their trade behind the counter, a sight I find endlessly fascinating.

Here in the queue is where one best experiences the singular magic of Mitchell’s. As folks stand waiting for their portions of hand-cut bacon or tender rump roast to be wrapped up in neat white paper, they inevitably start chatting. Time and again, I’ve had wonderfully entertaining conversations there with total strangers, or mini-reunions with old acquaintances.

From the outside, it’s hard to imagine how a small-scale operation like Mitchell’s survives, even thrives, in this era of cavernous supermarkets with their national supply-chain economics and over-the-top product selection.

But from the inside, it’s easy to see how.

Two Canadian Filmmakers Drop by for an Interview

Kyle Lennan and Geoff Norris (photo: J. Liebregts, durhamregion.com)
Kyle Lennan and Geoff Norris (photo: J. Liebregts, durhamregion.com)

This past Sunday, Toronto-based independent filmmakers Geoff Norris and Kyle Lennan came by my house in Joliet to interview me about the long-simmering Peotone Airport controversy in agricultural lands south of Chicago in Will County, IL. Norris and Lennan have been making a film about the proposed Pickering Airport project in the rural areas near Toronto, which has resulted in the government seizure of property and demolition of homes over the past several decades despite no tangible progress on the airport’s construction.

The story bears an eerie resemblance to that playing out in eastern Will County within the vast stretches of prime Illinois farmland near the rural villages of Peotone, Monee, and Beecher. Geoff and Kyle came across my op-ed series about the Peotone airport written for the Joliet Herald-News up through 2012, and were kind enough to include me as a local voice from the community on their road trip to the Chicago area, where they also filmed local activists/opponents to the project.

College Graduates and Employment Prospects

As thousands of college students graduate this month, including our students here at Roosevelt, many are concerned how they will fare in the current job market. And that market continues to be challenging as we slowly recover from the Great Recession of 2008-2010.

Recent news, however, show that the economy is adding new jobs (albeit not quite at the rate one would like to see this far into the economic recovery; and this 5 May 2013 report from the New York Times illustrates how much better off college graduates are in terms of employment levels than those who have some college but no degree, or no college at all. For workers without a high school diploma, employment prospects are very tough indeed, unlike in decades past when the US economy sported an abundance of unskilled labor positions. As the news article notes:

The unemployment rate for college graduates in April was a mere 3.9 percent, compared with 7.5 percent for the work force as a whole, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. Even when the jobless rate for college graduates was at its very worst in this business cycle, in November 2010, it was still just 5.1 percent. That is close to the jobless rate the rest of the work force experiences when the economy is good.

Among all segments of workers sorted by educational attainment, college graduates are the only group that has more people employed today than when the recession started.

The number of college-educated workers with jobs has risen by 9.1 percent since the beginning of the recession. Those with a high school diploma and no further education are practically a mirror image, with employment down 9 percent on net. For workers without even a high school diploma, employment levels have fallen 14.1 percent.

The news is not all good here, as the article raises an important point about what sort of jobs college grads have been taking.

But just because college graduates have jobs does not mean they all have “good” jobs.

There is ample evidence that employers are hiring college-educated workers for jobs that do not actually require college-level skills — positions like receptionists, file clerks, waitresses, car rental agents and so on.

“High-skilled people can take the jobs of middle-skilled people, and middle-skilled people can take jobs of low-skilled people,” said Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan. “And low-skilled people are out of luck.”

In some cases, employers are specifically requiring four-year degrees for jobs that previously did not need them, since companies realize that in a relatively poor job market college graduates will be willing to take whatever they can find.

Does this mean that the cost a four-year college degree is not a good investment anymore? Decidedly not, whether one takes the short-view (immediate employment prospects in a difficult job market) or the long-view (return on investment over one’s lifetime). College grads have a marked advantage either way. As the article continues to note:

The median weekly earnings of college-educated, full-time workers — like those for their counterparts with less education — have dipped in recent years. In 2012, the weekly median was $1,141, compared with $1,163 in 2007, after adjusting for inflation. The premium they earn for having that college degree is still high, though.

In 2012, the typical full-time worker with a bachelor’s degree earned 79 percent more than a similar full-time worker with no more than a high school diploma. For comparison, 20 years earlier the premium was 73 percent, and 30 years earlier it was 48 percent.

And since a higher percentage of college graduates than high school graduates are employed in full-time work, these figures actually understate the increase in the total earnings premium from college completion, said Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an independent research organization.

So, despite the painful upfront cost, the return on investment on a college degree remains high. An analysis from the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution in Washington estimated that the benefits of a four-year college degree were equivalent to an investment that returns 15.2 percent a year, even after factoring in the earnings students forgo while in school.

Today’s graduates will need to aggressively and strategically seek employment opportunities, to be sure; and they may have to settle for a less-than-optimal job or internship the first time around. But they’re still in a far better position than their less-educated peers to get gainful employment in their area of expertise, especially as the economy continues to recover.

A Personal Note to Midwest Generation

Dear Midwest Generation:

I admit it. For a long time I’ve assumed that you were nothing but a bureaucratic, ethics-challenged, profit-obsessed energy company. But your recent pleas to the Illinois Pollution Control Board for sympathy and understanding regarding your supposedly tardy efforts at environmental compliance have truly touched my heart.

Midwest Generation's Joliet 29 Power Station (photo: Matthew Grotto, Chicago Sun-Times)
Midwest Generation’s Joliet 29 Power Station (photo: Matthew Grotto, Chicago Sun-Times)

After all, you’ve owned the coal-burning Joliet and Romeoville power stations since 1999, which practically feels like yesterday. That’s hardly time enough to implement industry standard pollution-control upgrades as dictated by the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other annoying environmental laws written by people overly fixated on sulfur dioxide emissions or airborne particulate matter.

Burning coal generates electricity for us, which we love, and quite a bit of money for you, which you need. Hey, power company executives gotta eat, too, don’t they? After all, electricity production isn’t a charity endeavor — that would be (gasp!) socialism.

Midwest Generation officials testify to the IL Pollution Control Board, 29 Jan 2013, at Joliet Junior College (photo: Matthew Grotto, Chicago Sun-Times)
Midwest Generation officials testify to the IL Pollution Control Board, 29 Jan 2013, at Joliet Junior College (photo: Matthew Grotto, Chicago Sun-Times)

But making a profit in your business is tough these days, what with your outdated and inefficient power plants in Will County spewing so many pollutants that require “scrubbing” and various “mitigations.” Some of your chief critics — like Citizens Against Ruining the Environment, the Sierra Club, and the Illinois Attorney General’s office — don’t get that. They just keep whining that your coal plants are old and dirty and unhealthy.

C’mon, already. A little dirt never hurt anyone, except maybe a few finicky armchair environmentalists. You don’t hear the tens of thousands of working class and minority citizens living downwind of your coal plants complaining, do you? And is it really such a big a deal that you haven’t figured out what to do with those toxic coal ash waste piles you’re adding to on a daily basis?

Fisk Crawford St Line Power PlantsI would remind people that you did a pretty nice thing last year when you closed those two legitimately old coal-fired power plants on Chicago’s Southwest Side — the Fisk (built in 1903) and Crawford (1924) stations. For most of thirteen years after you bought them, you studiously ignored longstanding protests by neighborhood environmental watchdogs, ultra-liberal aldermen, and grandstanding green organizations. But once you finally determined that those old-timer plants weren’t going to turn a profit anymore if you installed their required upgrades, you quickly and decisively shut them down.

That was brave. So was letting all those Fisk and Crawford plant workers go. That’s why I’m sure that if and when the time comes to “release” the workers from your barely middle-aged Joliet station (which currently emits far more pollution than those old Fisk and Crawford plants combined), you’ll find a way to pull the trigger.

As for eventually complying with these new environmental regulations on sulfur dioxide? I’m grateful for your promise to get to it some year.

So shame on those ladies from CARE and those Sierra Club treehuggers and Pollution Board pencil pushers for badgering you with complaints, lawsuits, op-ed articles, scientific studies, mortality statistics, medical expense projections, probing questions, and other distractions. I wish they’d give a chronic and habitual polluter like you some credit for trying to reform itself. It’s obvious you’re trying, really trying.

Heck, by 2025 or so I’m sure you’ll have our Joliet smokestacks clean as a whistle.

I live in Joliet, about three miles as the smoke drifts from the Joliet 29 Generating Station on Route 6 operated by Midwest Generation since 1999. This is a revised version of my monthly op-ed column for the Joliet Herald-News. Check the Illinois Pollution Control Board’s website to learn how the regulatory process works and for information on Midwest Generation’s appeal for more compliance time as well as other pending issues.

Junior’s Fall from Grace: More Bad News for Peotone

You’d think that Jessie Jackson Jr.’s stunning fall from political grace last week would have opponents of the Great Imaginary Airport in Peotone doing cartwheels of joy out in the cold autumnal winds of eastern Will County.

Jesse Jackson Jr., former US Rep (IL-2nd)

After all, the last significant public appearance by Jackson was way back on April 21st, when as a progressive-minded environmentalist he promoted Earth Day by sanctimoniously spading up soil in a Peotone-area cornfield while surrounded by media and bussed-in supporters from his 2nd Congressional District. His purported “people’s groundbreaking” was for what Jackson insisted on calling the Abraham Lincoln National Airport.

That grandiose name is telling, for it expresses Jr.’s once-vaulting political ambition even as it inappropriately cloaks a misguided boondoggle of an airport project in the image of one of America’s most revered presidents. It also signifies the longstanding logjam between Jackson’s Cook County-based Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission (ALNAC) and the various governmental bodies of Will County, which understandably want to retain control over the airport’s construction and administration.

That’s why the folks of S.T.A.N.D. (Shut This Airport Nightmare Down) and other grassroots opponents of the Great Imaginary Airport should mourn rather than celebrate Jackson’s departure and ALNAC’s inevitable dissolution. Without the gridlock-producing squabbles over the airport’s construction funding, name, or design that Jackson’s commission helped create, airport proponents now have before them a slightly less congested path toward the project’s FAA approval — which hinges upon, among many other things, a unified governing authority for the airport.

STAND members hold up a sign at Rob Ogalla’s farm near Peotone, April 2012
(M. Bryson)

Note that I said “slightly.” That’s because building a functional political alliance in Illinois these days is about as likely as finding a Republican candidate with a chance to win Jackson’s empty seat in the forthcoming special election his resignation necessitates. Consequently, the fate of the Great Imaginary Airport will continue to be determined by a long war of retrenchment among various factions, some high profile and others little known.

On one side are Governor Pat Quinn and his army of IDOT technocrats, who have spent $29.8 million of taxpayer money thus far buying up 2,317 acres of land in the as-yet-unapproved airport’s footprint, and are now expanding their holdings through eminent domain proceedings against unwilling sellers.

Aligned with Quinn are various Will County leaders eager for a big fat construction project to provide local jobs, no matter how temporary those might be or whether the long-term prospects of the airport are viable.

On the other side are Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who strenuously opposes the project as antithetical to an expanded O’Hare; and United CEO Jeff Smisek, who is on record opposing a third airport for the Chicago region (a view shared by other major airline execs, as well).

Bult Field near Monee, IL (photo: FlightAware)

Joining their ranks are the politically weak but morally righteous grassroots opponents in eastern Will County, who correctly view the airport as a naked land grab by the state; and a guy named Jim Bult, who in a supreme example of irony already owns and runs a small private airport within the footprint of the GIA (Bult Field) and who to my knowledge has no desire to shut down his operation or take his neighbors’ land.

Sure, we’ll miss you, Junior, and all the free theater you provided us over the years. But as for the Great Imaginary Airport controversy in Peotone, the war grinds on.

A version of this article was published as my monthly op-ed column in the 4 December 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. For more information from IDOT’s perspective, consult the official South Suburban Airport website. For past news and critical analysis, see the commentary and news reports on this blog.

Equitable Education = a Strong Economy

The recent Chicago Teacher’s Union strike has exposed a long list of contentious issues in our K-12 educational system. The most troubling of these is the glaring inequity among our region’s public schools.

Nowhere is this more evident that in Chicago’s District 299, where a small percentage of children enjoy a world-class education at one of the District’s vaunted selective enrollment schools, while most students languish in understaffed and overwhelmed neighborhood schools surrounded by violence and economic stagnation. It also applies to our state as a whole, which is ranked among the worst in the nation by the Education Law Center in their recent report cards on public school funding equity.

This long-entrenched divide between the educational haves and have-nots not only mirrors the gulf between rich and poor in American society, it also replicates and reinforces these socioeconomic inequities. You don’t need a PhD to know that students from disadvantaged schools are less likely to graduate, go to college, and get good jobs, and (not incidentally) stay out of prison.

The source of this inequity is equally obvious. Since local property taxes provide the lion’s share of funding for America’s school districts, the resources (and therefore the quality) of the schools are directly proportional to the wealth of their community.

Schools in big-money districts have all the bells and whistles: small class sizes, good facilities, broad offerings in languages and the fine arts, and gifted learning programs. Meanwhile, impoverished districts limp along with overcrowded classrooms, out-of-date technology, bare-bones curricula, and overstretched faculty. (The metal detectors are state-of-the-art, though.)

This is not right. It’s not acceptable for a kid’s educational future to be determined simply by where she was born. And it darn well needs to change.

That’s because the fates of our economy and educational system are inextricably linked. When the economy tanks, we unwisely respond by slashing public education funding — cutting programs, firing teachers, closing schools. State and federal support for K-12 education has steadily deteriorated. But this misguided strategy merely guarantees more economic problems down the line, as we end up with poorly-educated citizens who are not college-ready and cannot compete for good entry-level jobs, let alone start businesses and become “job creators” themselves.

Here’s an alternative plan. Let’s invest in two critical pillars of K-12 educational excellence that every high-achieving school district in America takes for granted: small class sizes and rich curricular offerings. We do it by (1) hiring tens of thousands of teachers for overpopulated schools, and (2) building additional classroom space where needed. This initiative would put people to work by creating superior learning environments for our kids.

Instead of just emphasizing crowd control in classrooms of 30 children (the standard class size in Joliet’s District 86), teachers could do meaningful work with groups of 18-22, thus giving kids exponentially more time and quality instruction. Every school, not just the richest 1%, would have foreign language from kindergarten onward, full-time art and music teachers, a school garden linked to the science and health curriculum, and gifted education for students who need greater challenge.

Citizens of wealthy school districts don’t consider these things “luxuries,” but rather absolute necessities. So why is it acceptable to us as a nation that so many of our schools do without?

Let’s get our professional educators and our tradespeople back to work building a better, more equitable educational system. There is no more important investment in our future that we can make.

A version of this essay appeared as my op-ed column, “Equitable Education Equals a Strong Economy” in the Sunday, 23 Sept 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News (p25).

Labor-Managment Conflict in Blue-Collar America: The Caterpillar Strike in Joliet

Without Caterpillar Corporation, I probably wouldn’t exist.

Once upon a time, a Kansas farm boy (my grandfather) moved to central Illinois with some of his brothers to find work. He eventually caught on at Caterpillar in Peoria, where he became a union machinist — what he always called a “tool and die man.” He worked hard, got married, and started a family. Then around 1951, he was transferred to the brand-new Joliet hydraulics plant and moved here with his wife and two kids.

One of those children was my mother, then nine years old, who years later met and married my father — and just a few years afterward, I arrived on the scene. Hence my very existence depended upon, among others things, Grandpa getting that job at Cat.

I relate this family anecdote because when it comes to grappling with the meaning and significance of the current union strike at the Caterpillar plant in Joliet, now well into its fourth excruciating month, history matters. Personal connections matter.

Cat workers on the picket line (photo: Fox Valley Labor News)

In a working class town like this, where people from all walks of life have deep and sometimes tangled histories with the Joliet’s industrial past, labor disputes resonate. They’re not just abstract stories in the news about someone else somewhere else. They’re about us: our aspirations, our values, our prejudices, our sense of community.

As an Illinois citizen, I have a vested interest in Caterpillar remaining strong and vibrant. Its very identity is built from equal parts technological innovation, engineering expertise, and good old-fashioned hard work. Cat’s products and the myriad of jobs the company provides are important to Illinois’ economic vitality.

But as the grandson of a tool and die man, I also feel solidarity with the hundreds of striking machinists out on Route 6. In their rejection of Cat management’s offers of a new long-term work contract, Local 851 union members hardly are asking for the moon. What they’re putting themselves on the line for, rather, is the preservation of good blue-collar jobs within America’s embattled middle class.

Caterpillar management’s latest offer to the workers (up for a vote today) would freeze wages, double health care expenses, and cut into pension benefits. One shouldn’t forget that Cat has had a longstanding multi-tier pay schedule in place for union machinists, with those hired after May 2nd, 2005, getting significantly lower wages than older “Tier 1” workers. So-called “supplemental” machinists get paid even less than the Tier 2 folks. See a pattern?

Meanwhile, Caterpillar achieved record sales, revenues, and profits in 2011 — and its second quarter profits in 2012 are the highest in company history. Yet with labor contract talks at fits and starts, Cat is playing hardball by advertising for and hiring replacement workers, thereby taking advantage of high local unemployment conditions in which any job seems like a good job.

The Caterpillar labor dispute is thus a microcosm of the growing cultural conflict between the exaltation of corporate greed and self-interest (the market rules best) and the long-term viability of America’s working class (the people matter most).

Most folks agree that our country needs good manufacturing jobs with decent wages and benefits, that companies should play fair, and that employees should work hard. But how do we put those common values into practice? We’ll soon find out here in Joliet.*

* On Friday, just a few hours after this article appeared in the 17 August 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News, the striking machinists’ union voted to approve Caterpillar’s most recent contract offer, as reported here in the Chicago Tribune and other sources. Details about the vote totals were not released, but apparently it was close. Early analysis indicates that the union conceded on several key issues, including the doubling of health care premiums, the elimination of pensions, and a reduction in seniority rights.

Bulldozing the Rights of the People: That’s the Illiana Way

Remember the Prairie Parkway? Just a few years ago, it was the Big New Road Project of choice in northeastern Illinois. A monumentally dumb idea for a whole host of reasons, the Prairie Parkway fortunately fizzled after the recession of 2008 (though old road projects are rather like zombies that can’t be killed once and for all).

The new road of the day is the much ballyhooed Illiana Expressway, which will link the booming metropolises of Lowell, IN, and Wilmington, IL, and in the process pave over a lot of high-quality Midwestern farmland. But the Illiana isn’t a gentle zombie that plods along with a vacant stare. No, this road monster is pure evil, and it’s coming after us with ferocious speed.

Map of proposed routes for the Illiana Expressway (source: IDOT)

Local politicians and IDOT officials claim we need the Illiana to divert truck traffic from I-80 and US-30; support the burgeoning warehouse/distribution center district in central Will County; provide east-west highway access to the yet-to-be-built (or even approved) Peotone Airport; and create jobs.

I’m all for more jobs, especially if they’re permanent ones that pay a living wage with benefits and occur in an environment that does not tolerate sexual harassment of workers. (This, Joliet-area readers know, is not always the case with the warehouse/distribution industry here in Will County.) But the traffic relief  argument smells fishy to me, since this always ends up being, well, a red herring. Remember how I-355 was supposed to relieve traffic on I-55 and 294? Last time I drove those interstates, they were still among the most traffic-choked in the region.

The Peotone Airport reference is the really big red flag, though. Right now, legal but unethical eminent domain proceedings are being wielded by IDOT against Will County landowners unwilling to give up their land for this Great Imaginary Airport that no airline supports.

Now the Illinois legislature has approved “quick-take” powers for IDOT to seize more private property for the Illiana Expressway, an action that should outrage you, fellow citizens. Why?

Start with the gross injustice here. Quick-take allows the state to simply declare it wants a piece of property, then take it. The process is nice and quick — hence the name — and conveniently circumvents the normal eminent domain process (itself hardly benign) by which citizens may take the state to court to fight the condemnation or haggle over a selling price once their property is condemned.

Secondly, the road has no funding. The only money that’s been allocated thus far for the Illiana is $9 million for several years’ worth of environmental impact and planning studies. Projected unfunded construction costs include over $3 billion for the Illinois section alone.

Will County farmland just south of Joliet, June 2006 (M. Bryson)

Finally, and mostly absurdly, IDOT hasn’t decided where the road will go. Right now two different routes for the Illiana are being evaluated (along with, ironically, a “no-build” option to appease malcontents like me). How in the world can IDOT condemn property under quick-take if an official route hasn’t yet been chosen and approved? Does this strike anyone else besides me as completely illogical?

Perhaps this is root of the problem. When it comes to phantom roads and imaginary airports, there are no ethics or logic operating in Springfield.

The road monsters are coming, people. It’s quick-take season now. Better get out of the way, or you’ll get run over.

This essay is a revised version of my op-ed column that appeared in today’s Joliet Herald-News as “Illiana Bulldozing Rights of Citizens in Its Path.” Though I’m not a transportation / planning expert, I tend to think we have plenty of roads in Illinois already. I also appreciate the fact that my Joliet residential street was repaved last week; notably, no new roads were created in that stimulation of the local economy.

The Airport Nobody Wants or Needs

The Saturday before Earth Day, Jesse Jackson, Jr. and a contingent of political supporters rode down to the farmlands of eastern Will County to spade up a little dirt in a pious promotion of the ill-fated Great Imaginary (aka Peotone) Airport.

Given that the project has neither FAA approval nor the support of a single major airline, Jackson’s well-publicized pontifications were presumptuous — but not pointless, for they re-energized the hitherto dispirited airport opposition movement around Peotone, Beecher, and Monee, the small towns most affected by this ongoing fiasco.

I drove out northeast of Peotone that Saturday in hopes of attending Jackson’s media stunt and the planned counter-demonstration by the longstanding grassroots organization Shut This Airport Nightmare Down (STAND). Turned out I was too late and missed them both.

IDOT's South Suburban Airport headquarters on Eagle Lake Road in eastern Will County, aka "The Compound" (M. Bryson)

But after heading past the Illinois Department of Transportation’s heavily-fenced airport headquarters on Eagle Lake Road west of State Route 50 — a place derisively nicknamed “The Compound” by locals for its quasi-military installation appearance — I ran into some folks who helpfully filled me in on the day’s proceedings.

Robert Ogalla, a farmer whose wife Judy is the vice-president of STAND, grows corn, soybeans, and wheat on their picturesque farm along County Road 10. Back in 2003, the Ogallas received a commendation from the Will-South Cook Soil and Water Conservation District for their exemplary efforts to reduce soil erosion and polluting runoff on their property.

The Ogalla farm as seen from the south (M. Bryson)

Mr. Ogalla described the lively scene that had transpired earlier that day at the Compound, where over 400 STAND supporters had gathered peacefully to protest Jackson’s groundbreaking event and voice their many objections to the state’s relentless land-acquisition plans.

“This is some of the best farmland in the world,” Ogalla told me, gesturing toward his well-tended fields. “Those trees you see there on the horizon were planted many years ago as part of Illinois’ Conservation Reserve Program by my 101-year-old neighbor.”

He paused to let that sink in, then continued, “All this will be gone if the airport gets built. The irony of it is that no airline even wants it.”

I talk with Virginia Hamann and Rob Ogalla on 21 April 2012 (M. Bryson)

Another STAND member, Virginia Hamann of Peotone, drives a bus for the Peotone School District and helps her husband run a dairy farm located across the road from the proposed airport. “What gets me is the terrible waste of money all this is,” she said.

How wasteful, you might ask? Many of those fertile fields I admired that day already have been purchased by the state — to be precise, 2,471 acres at the cost of 34,014,383 taxpayer dollars — all without FAA approval of the project, naturally. Now, with willing sellers scarce and land values low, IDOT has condemned some local farmers’ property (like that of Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt) to close the deal on the remaining acreage within the Great Imaginary Airport’s nine-square-mile footprint.

When I asked Ogalla and Hamann how their neighbors were feeling about the airport issue these days, they estimated that a strong majority, perhaps 70-80 percent, now backed STAND’s opposition to the project.

Virginia and Rob hold up a STAND sign at Rob's farm (M. Bryson)

So here’s your silver lining. After several years of community demoralization in the face of a seemingly-unstoppable government juggernaut, the awakening provided by Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s grandstanding gambit has re-ignited grassroots opposition to one of the most foolhardy endeavors in Illinois history. Or so I can only hope.

A version of this article was published as my monthly op-ed column in the 3 May 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. For more information from IDOT’s perspective, consult the official South Suburban Airport website. For deeper news and critical analysis, see the commentary and news reports on this blog as well as by WBEZ Chicago Public Radio and the Chicago Tribune for recent coverage of the political gamesmanship surrounding the Great Imaginary / Peotone / South Suburban / Abraham Lincoln National Airport.

Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind building an airport, too — but just a small one for balsa wood planes in my backyard in Joliet. No eminent domain proceedings by IDOT will be necessary in its construction.