Bill, I'm afraid you are quite misinformed in this case. As much as it would fit the template that the big bad military is responsible for retaliating against the civilian population, in fact in most cases I would venture a guess that you may even be aligned in many ways with those who are causing these bases to disappear and be devoid of aviation.
Being that I'm not close to this Chanute situation I can't directly comment however, the military can not be blamed or accused of retaliation on the local civilian populations in most of these situations.
I have been involved closely with a couple of these base closing "debates" so to speak. Most often what happens is that the military turns the property over to local governments who will then create some sort of a re-use committee who will determine what happens with the property. The committee is then lobbied by a number of interest groups including environmental action agencies, municipal airport advocates, real estate interests etc. The committee then determines what the best post military use will be for the property. Unfortunately in many cases it ends up being non-aviation interests that win out because aviation doesn't have a lot of public interest or a strong lobbing group.
In the case of Hamilton AFB it's property was mostly turned over to the City of Novato, Marin County. Due to pressure from the environmental lobby a portion of the land was reserved for the Hamilton Wetland Restoration Project. This was a joint venture between the Federal Government (U.S. Army corps of Engineers) and the State of California. This had nothing to do with spiting the local citizens and everything to do with the pressures of the environmental lobby. I think more often than not you can place the "blame" of these airfields getting plowed under firmly on the environmentalists and the local governments.
Ryan
Bill Greenwood wrote:
That sounds like something that the military would do, for spite. To take an airfield with runways, built with many taxpayer dollars, and destroy it so civilians could not use it as an airport.
That is exactly what they did at Hamilton AF base just north of San Francisco where land was really tight and a gen av airport was really needed. They shut out gen av and as far as I know it just sits there vacant.
The Navy did the same thing at the former base in the north part of Chicago,( Glendale?) which again had a need for more space for gen av. Same in Denver.
The norm is that the military is not a friend to aviation except if they are doing it themselves on taxpayer dollars. For the rest of us we are off the back of the bus.
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