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New hangars proposed to replace Prospect Heights hotel at Chicago Executive Airport

Plans are underway to demolish the shuttered Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Chicago North Shore hotel in Prospect Heights and incorporate its site into a network of eight hangars at Chicago Executive Airport proposed to be operated by the New York-based firm Sky Harbour.

On Monday, the Prospect Heights City Council is scheduled to consider recommending a Cook County 6B tax incentive for the project at the airport the city co-owns with the village of Wheeling.

The incentive, intended to keep industrial development in Cook competitive with the collar counties, essentially cuts property taxes in half for 10 years before they gradually rise back to normal over the next two years.

Demolition of the 58-year-old hotel that closed last summer is expected in about 60 days, Chicago Executive Airport Executive Director Jeff Miller said. Its roughly 4 acres, entirely in Prospect Heights, will then become part of the nearly 23-acre development within the airport grounds.

  The former Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Chicago North Shore hotel next to the Milwaukee Avenue entrance of Chicago Executive Airport in Prospect Heights will be demolished in about two months. The plan is for eight hangars to be built on the grounds of the airport itself. Paul Valade/pvalade@dailyherald.com

Prospect Heights officials have recognized that larger project as a better use for the land the aging hotel had used.

“The hotel became something of an opportunity,” Prospect Heights City Administrator Joe Wade said of the hangar development. “It certainly fits the airport.”

While Sky Harbour was in a position to immediately buy the hotel property last year, the long-term plan is that the airport will buy it to lease it to the firm under a long-term agreement, Miller said.

Each of the eight proposed hangars would be 37,000 square feet and likely accommodate two to three aircraft at a time. Four of the structures would probably be built initially, beginning either this fall or in early 2026 when the airport will be marking its 100th anniversary, Miller said.

“This is going to be the largest development on the airport that has ever happened,” he added.

The construction project itself is estimated at $100 million, and is projected to generate $500 million in economic activity during the initial six years before all eight hangars would be completed.

The presence of the hangars isn’t expected to significantly change the number of aircraft operations at Chicago Executive Airport — currently about 100,000 per year, Miller said. But because there are no existing hangars, arriving aircraft will be able to remain at the airport for extended periods without having to depart again.

“This doesn’t equate to us becoming O’Hare,” Miller said.

Headquartered in White Plains, New York, Sky Harbour is a company that builds and manages hangars. The new airport structures will bear a particular aesthetic design, Miller said.

The loss of the hotel for the project isn’t being considered a great sacrifice. The Ramada Plaza had housed about 200 Venezuelan asylum-seekers, including 60 children, from the autumn of 2022 until the early spring of 2023 and experienced it as a boost to business.

The hotel already had been closed for some time before returning to operation after a remodeling in 2016, officials said.

Not only will the land now produce more tax, but the hangar project will be a financial boon to operations at the airport, Miller said.

“It’s good for the community,” he added. “It’s good for Prospect Heights. It’s kind of the mandate of the communities that we remain self-sufficient and be a better neighbor. This allows us to put more money into infrastructure.”

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