Vacant armory can't be used as police station because of air traffic safety rules, Mayor Johnson says

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration on Tuesday cited federal air traffic safety regulations for the decision to use a former National Guard armory to store and maintain police vehicles, aircraft and other equipment — and not for a new Southwest Side police district.

Last week, alderpersons in the area accused the mayor of pulling the rug out from under their longstanding campaign for a new district to speed response times. It would be carved out of the existing Chicago Lawn police district, which serves the second-largest geographic area with the fewest officers per capita.

They accused the mayor of thumbing his nose at a bill approved by the Illinois General Assembly and signed by Gov. JB Pritzker calling for the state to sell the closed armory at 5400 W. 63rd St. to the city for $1 “for the express purpose” of creating a new police district.

Instead, Johnson introduced an ordinance that calls for accepting the state’s bargain basement offer — but to use the building for the “storage, maintenance and operation of police vehicles, equipment and aircraft.”

On Tuesday, the Johnson administration explained that decision: The shuttered armory is too close to Midway Airport — 63rd Street is the airport's southern edge — to comply with federal regulations, city lawyers said.

“The U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have requirements and regulations that guide how the city uses this building given its proximity to Midway International Airport,” according to a Law Department statement. “The city continues to work through any regulatory and compatibility restrictions.”

A legal team is now examining what, if any, zoning changes could be made to get around the federal regulations and “noise compatibility program measures upon which federal funds have been expended,” the Law Department stated.

But 13th Ward Ald. Marty Quinn said he "doesn't buy" the mayor's argument. Not when “FAA waivers are granted all the time” — most recently for a high school “two blocks to the south” — also “within the runway protection zone.”

“If it’s in the runway protection zone and it’s a hindrance to aircraft flying in and out of Midway, then it should be torn down. Save those excuses for someone else. It’s an excuse of convenience because you don’t want to do something relative to police," Quinn said.

The armory complex includes two buildings. One, facing the airfield, would not be used for the new station. The station would go in the other building, facing 63rd Street, and is "a block away from the Chicago Fire Department," Quinn said.

"I understand the runway protection zone. I don’t understand how it’s applicable here when there’s a fire station a block to the east," he said.

Quinn said Johnson’s own Department of Aviation backed an ordinance in March — before the state agreed to essentially give the armory to the city — to try to buy it for $1.3 million.

“We didn’t hear, 'We can’t do that because of the FAA' then," Quinn said. But now "that we want to do a police district, and we passed a bill that the sole purpose is a police district, [they’re saying], 'You can’t do that because of the FAA.' No. I’m not buying that.”

Ald. Silvana Tabares of the 23rd Ward accused the mayor of thwarting community will. Last spring, 13th and 23rd Ward voters overwhelming approved a nonbinding referendum demanding a new police district to take the load off Chicago Lawn.

“The mayor is playing politics with public safety. ... There’s a real need here. Our residents deserve to know that, when they call 911, help is on the way. We don’t have that now, and the mayor appears to be OK with that,” Tabares said.

“We have a solution to a problem, but he refuses to act. And when you refuse to act, you become part of the problem," she said.

Tabares accused the mayor of talking a good game about "community oversight of police” while doing the opposite.

“Here we have a clear case of what the community wants, and he’s showing us that those voices don’t matter,” she said.

Two Southwest Side Democrats — state Rep. Angie Guerrero-Cuellar and state Sen. Mike Porfirio — are asking Pritzker to put the land transfer on hold "until the city agrees to use the property for the express purpose of a police district.”

Their letter to the governor called the Chicago Lawn Police District the “busiest and largest by population, ranking first for all crimes committed across the city.”

The lawmakers said their constituents “frustrated with slow police response times” are demanding the increased protection that would come from a new station.