Journal & Topics Media Group

Soundproof Deadline Hits Friday For 11 Park Ridge Homes


Airplane coasts over Des Plaines en route to O’Hare International Airport.

Eleven households in Park Ridge may forfeit their only chance to have their homes soundproofed if they don’t finish their paperwork and turn it in before Friday, Jan. 17.

Ernie Kosower, Park Ridge’s new chairman of the city’s O’Hare Airport Commission and its delegate to the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission’s Fly Quiet Committee, said last week that of 27 eligible homes in southern Park Ridge, offered a last chance, 11 started their paperwork and have not turned it into the Chicago Department of Aviation.

There are no guarantees that future soundproofing will be offered within the corridor between Higgins on the south and about Peterson on the north.

In the O’Hare Modernization Project (OMP), devised to shift runways to an east-west flow, the predicted noise contours for the northern-most east-west runways finally were deemed appropriate to impact southern parts of the city.

They were assigned to phases 17A, 17B and an edge of 17C (which also extends into Chicago’s Norwood Park community).

Park Ridge’s OAC made many attempts to contact the eligible homeowners in the flight tracks two years ago. Homes on 17A and B which responded in 2017 were soundproofed.

Despite efforts to get more responses then, OAC and its city liaison, Ald. Marc Mazzuca (6th) were frustrated that more residents near Maine South High School, on a direct flight track for an existing landing pattern (Pratt Avenue and Belle Plaine) didn’t sign up then.

In Park Ridge, requests for soundproofing against O’Hare airport noise date back to the early 1980s. The late Mayor Marty Butler was a founding leader of the Suburban O’Hare Commission but had trouble convincing the Chicago Department of Aviation at the time that there were any O’Hare planes over Park Ridge.

Five Park Ridge mayors and many aldermen who followed that time have tried to get help for residents.

There was a plan for a Phase 18, to offer a last soundproofing opportunity, especially when a house had been sold and a new owner was interested. It was offered to many O’Hare neighbors who had missed the first chance.

That phase was expected to be offered in 2018, but a 2017 discovery that vinyl screens were creating odors when sealed in soundproofed windows, delayed the process and affected work for O’Hare and Midway neighbors.

CDA went back, tested the windows near Midway Airport, identified the cause of the “odorous windows” and had to get replacements designed, manufactured and installed.

That left CDA barely a year to complete any houses which had not been started. Those have to have all their work completed before OMP ends in January 2021.

Remaining homeowners are divided now in phases 18  and 19. Those who responded and are already assigned in Phase 18 must get their paperwork turned in this week.

Completion of a final runway extension will determine the end of soundproofing under OMP.

Each change to O’Hare, from runways to new gates or buildings, may affect where planes fly overhead. New plans for terminals will change taxiways, and architects have not produced final plans yet.

That same southwest corner of O’Hare will be impacted by arrivals and departures on diagonal and parallel east-west runways which both fly above and across the northeast corner of the airport near Park Ridge, Des Plaines and Rosemont.

Support local news by subscribing to the Journal & Topics in print or online.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.