Mayor Johnson says empty arsenal can’t be used as police station due to air traffic safety regulations

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration on Tuesday cited federal air traffic safety regulations in deciding to use a former National Guard armory for storing and maintaining police vehicles, aircraft and other equipment rather than creating a new police district on the Southwest Side.

Last week, area aldermen accused the mayor of pulling the rug out from under their longtime campaign for a new district that would 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 ignoring a bill approved by the Illinois General Assembly and signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker calling on the state to sell the shuttered 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 calling for the state’s lowest bid to be accepted — but to use the building for “storage, maintenance, and operation of police vehicles, equipment, and aircraft.”

On Tuesday, the Johnson administration explained the decision: The shuttered armory is too close to Midway Airport — 63rd Street is the airport’s southern end — to meet federal requirements, city attorneys said.

“The U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have requirements and regulations that govern the city’s use of this building given its proximity to Midway International Airport,” according to a statement from the Department of Law. “The city continues to work through any regulatory and compliance constraints.”

The legal team is currently investigating what, if any, zoning changes could be made to circumvent federal regulations and “noise compliance program funds for which federal funds were expended,” the Law Department said.

But 13th Ward Councilman Marty Quinn said he “doesn’t buy” the mayor’s argument. Not when “FAA waivers are being granted all the time” — most recently for a high school “two blocks south” — including “in the runway protection zone.”

“If it’s in the runway protection zone and it’s an obstacle 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 about policing,” Quinn said.

The armory complex includes two buildings. One, facing the airport, will not be used as a new station. The station will be in the other building, facing 63rd Street, and is “a block from the Chicago Fire Department,” Quinn said.

“I understand the runway protection zone. I don’t understand how it applies here since there’s a fire station a block east,” he said.

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

“We didn’t hear back then, ‘We can’t do this because of the FAA,’” Quinn said. But now, “when we want to create a police district and we’ve passed a law that the sole purpose is a police district, (they say, ‘You can’t do this because of the FAA.’ No. I don’t buy that.”

Councilwoman Silvana Tabares of the 23rd Ward accused the mayor of thwarting the will of the community. Last spring, voters in the 13th and 23rd Wards overwhelmingly approved a nonbinding referendum calling for the creation of a new police district to relieve Chicago Lawn.

“The mayor is playing politics with public safety. … There is a real need here. Our residents deserve to know that when they call 911, help is on the way. Right now we don’t have it, and the mayor clearly agrees with that,” Tabares said.

“We have a solution to the 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 lot about “community oversight of the police” when in reality he is doing the opposite.

“Here we have a clear example of what the community wants, and he shows us that those votes don’t matter,” she said.

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

In a letter to the governor, the Chicago Lawn Police District was called “the busiest and largest in population, ranking first in crime in the city.”

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