Why was Abby
coming
up?
Folks, I'd ask your patience. We're just waiting on a couple more for a quorum.
Give me about two minutes.
All right, we're going to go.
Good afternoon. The current time is 1:49 PM.
The meeting of the Committee on Aviation is called to order.
We will now have a roll call to establish a quorum.
Chairman O'Shea is present. Vice Chairman Curtis.
Alderman Hopkins.
Alderman Dowell.
Alderman Robinson.
Here remote.
Alderman Lee.
Alderman Quinn.
Here.
Alderman Lopez.
Alderman Coleman.
Alderman Rodriguez.
Alderman Tabares.
Alderman Burnett.
Alderman Irvin.
Present.
Alderman Cardona.
Alderman Waguespack.
Alderman Mitts.
Alderman Sposato.
Thanks for Sposato, chair.
Alderman Nugent.
Alderman Napolitano.
Alderman Hopkins.
Present.
Thank you.
There are 13 members present, including myself. We have a quorum.
The following alderpersons have requested remote access for today's Committee on
Aviation.
Alderman Rodriguez,
are you on?
Oh.
Alderman Rodriguez, Alderman Tabares, Alderman Napolitano.
Alderman-
Alderman Tabares is here.
Present.
Alderman Tabares is present.
Actually, chairs.
Having a quorum already present, can I get a motion to recommend approval of these
Rule 59 requests?
Alderman Irvin so moves. All in favor?
All opposed?
In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
I'd like to also add Alderman Curtis to the quorum.
At this time, we will begin the public comment period.
Out of respect for everybody's time, each speaker is limited to three minutes.
And the streak stays alive. We have zero public speakers.
Good.
We're going to keep this moving.
This concludes the public comment period.
Item number one before our committee
is the approval of the January 20th, 2026, Rule
45 report for the Committee on Aviation.
If there are no questions, can I get a motion to recommend approval of the report?
So moved by Alderman Cardona. All in favor?
Opposed? In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
Item number two is a substitute ordinance
2026-0026369,
lease agreements with Atlantic Aviation
Corporation and Signature Flight Support
LLC for the use and redevelopment of facilities
at Chicago Midway International Airport.
Here before us today,
Managing Deputy Commissioner Elizabeth Granados Perez
and Chief Commercial Officer Amber Ritter from the Chicago Department of
Aviation. They are here and present to provide
information and answer questions regarding this ordinance.
Thank you very much, Chairman. Thank you, council members, for your attention this
warm afternoon. We are here to present to you
two leases for approval for FBOs at Midway Airport.
We'll get into the details, and I'll, in a moment, introduce
my colleagues here from the two companies.
But first, I just want to level set as to what we're talking about here.
These are two leases, one with Atlantic Aviation and one with Signature
Aviation, who both operate fixed-base operations at
Midway, and we'll just explain that more in a moment.
Importantly, these are fantastic deals for the city and fantastic deals
for Midway and the future of general aviation in
Chicago, and specifically at Midway.
For each of these two leases, we have negotiated approximately a
20% increase in the rental payments over and above the
existing rental payments for our existing leases with these two
entities. In addition to that, which you'll hear more about, $60
million from each at minimum in infrastructure investments to
modernize and improve the GA facilities
at Midway. And on top of that, $7.5 million
from each company in contributions to a Midway runway
rehabilitation project, which is about half the
estimated cost of the project. So significant improvements and investments
into Midway as we go forward. Remember, this is the 100th year.
Next year, I guess, is the 100th year of Midway Airport.
So we are very excited to really be introducing the new
iterations of these leases and these relationships with our GA
partners as we go into the next 100 years for
Midway.
I will talk a little bit more about general aviation and what this means
for Midway and the city and all the benefits.
But before I do that, I want to introduce my colleagues here from the two
leaseholders, the two companies.
Starting from your alphabetical order perspective, council members.
Starting on the end, first of all, we have Atlantic Aviation on my
right side, your left side of the room. I'll start at the end.
Dawud Crooms is the general counsel of Atlantic Aviation.
Jeffrey Foland is the CEO of Atlantic Aviation.
We also have behind us a few other folks from Atlantic, in no particular
order. Clive Low, the chief development officer.
Deb Kelly, the VP of business development. Bernard Young.
Raise your hand, Bernard, because he's the superstar here.
He's the area general manager, our actual local manager on the
ground of the entire facility as it exists now at Midway.
And Evan Campbell, who's the director of business development and sustainability
for Atlantic. And then to my left, your right, we
have Signature Aviation. So again, from left to right here we've
got Tony LaFave, who is the CEO of Signature.
And Bridget Gonchar to his left, who is the vice president of
airport relations and strategic programs for Signature.
And then we also have Jim Hopkins, who is the senior vice
president of
Signature Aviation. They'll talk a little bit more in a moment about their
development plans and their business models, their labor practices,
all of the stuff that I know you're going to want to hear about.
But before we get there, I want to just go through what this deal
entails for us.
It's not advancing. What
is FBO? So I'm using the phrase FBO.
That stands for fixed-base operations.
I know you probably all know this, but just for everyone's edification, a
fixed-base operator runs the general aviation facilities
for an airport. So general aviation is anything that's not a
commercial jet coming into the terminals.
So at Midway, obviously we have our commercial business is Southwest, largely, and
certainly a lot of other airline partners.
But the GA
operations handle private jets, charter flights,
oftentimes medical
deliveries, and that kind of thing. So it's largely private aircraft.
What they do, and you can see this map of the existing spaces at Midway.
These two leaseholders, Atlantic and Signature, have existing leases at Midway,
and they've been
wonderful partners of ours at Midway for several decades now.
Atlantic is on the southern quadrant of the photograph, the
picture. You can see the development sort of in a triangle on the southern side.
That is Atlantic's current footprint, and we'll be talking more about how they're
going to be improving and developing that.
And then on the left side or west side, that is Signature's footprint.
So what
FBOs do for GA aircraft is they provide fueling and ground
handling. They provide storage,
first-class terminal space for these private jets and other
aircraft that come in. This is very important for Midway.
So I want to really emphasize one interesting kind of fact is that
Midway, not O'Hare, but Midway is the premier GA
airport for Chicago.
The operations at O'Hare are significant, but a much smaller
percentage of our overall volume at O'Hare.
At Midway, it's about 20% of operations come through the
GA. So
just to kind of focus on an example, just a few weeks ago,
we had the Obama Center opening. And of course, we were very
excited here to have a lot of dignitaries come through, including former
presidents and former elected officials and current elected officials,
and a lot of other folks, and many of them came through the Midway GA.
They came through these two companies' facilities.
So it's important to Midway to make sure that these facilities
are modernized and idealized because what we don't want to do, just to be
really frank, is to have that business go to Gary,
go to Chicago Executive. I mean,
good for them, but we want to keep that in Chicago, of course.
And so we want these folks to be coming through Chicago, seeing Chicago,
experiencing Chicago, and that includes sports charters, that includes
music acts, these kinds of things that come through GA.
Midway is the premier GA airport of the region, and we want to
keep it that way and keep it strong, and the only way we can do that is to
modernize.
So a little bit about the money, because that's important, and then we'll talk more
about the development. So in these new leases, these are both 20-year...
I should say they're fairly identical leases between the two companies.
They both happen to have leases that expired in the past year
or so, a couple of years. They're currently both month-to-month.
So this would be the next iteration of those leases.
They're each 20-year leases, plus two optional five-year
extensions if and only if they meet their development
goals, obligations that we're obliging them to do on the
timetable that we agree to with them.
And of course, are otherwise not in default of the agreements.
But the terms that we've negotiated from a revenue standpoint are
significantly improved over our existing revenue.
So,
rent goes up by about 20% each, and as the development
continues, it'll actually go up even further because they will be bringing in
even more passengers and customers than they're able to now.
So for example, 2025 actuals for revenue to the airport
from the businesses of Atlantic and Signature at Midway was $12.8
million. And the 2027, which would be the first year of these new leases,
projected total is about 15.3. So that's an increase of
about 3 million, approximately about a 20% increase.
That increase comes from a few areas, including we've negotiated
a fuel flowage fee that is a different way.
In other words, when they pump fuel into aircraft, we get a
cut of that, of course, just to speak frankly.
And so we've negotiated a new fuel flowage fee that captures...
It's a little bit easier for an accounting standpoint, and it captures more revenue
to the city.
Also importantly, they collect the landing fees.
So landing fees are set by the airport based on our
budget needs for aircraft based on landed weight.
Each FBO collects that landing fee, but they are able to
keep a percentage of that as their sort of fee for collecting it.
In the current lease, they keep
30% of that. They
only pass on 70%. But in these new leases, they pass on 90%.
So it's a huge increase in landing fees that come straight to the
airport. Again, landing fees that would only be generated by their business.
If they weren't there, these people wouldn't be landing.
And then finally, another major area of revenue increase is the square
footage of the land that they're going to be leasing.
Elizabeth will talk about that in a moment.
But both
FBOs have identified through our work with them
spaces that were not currently being revenue-generating spaces, not currently
leased, that they're going to be using for their new development and that will be
revenue generating for us right off the bat.
With that, I want to hand it over to First Deputy Commissioner Elizabeth Granados
Perez, who is of course over at Midway.
And she can talk a little bit about the development and other aspects.
Thank you, Amber. Thank you, everyone.
So Amber's right. We're going to have these great rental gains
as a part of these new leases. But what I'd like to highlight is the fact that
they are going to also be making capital
contributions to Midway. And so, again
for those of us that are there on a day-to-day basis, being able to
see these improvements that will be coming in the next coming years is very
exciting.
Not just for the airport, but as well as for the community.
So the FBOs as part of their presentation will show you renderings
of what they're proposing, but we are essentially modernizing
and bringing some sleek new buildings to the airport
property.
So each company has committed to spend
approximately $60 million in infrastructure improvements.
And so whether that's new hangars, new terminal spaces,
eVTOL charging capabilities, their passenger
processing facilities
they are going to make improvements to their current
locations as well as build some new structures.
And I think what's important to highlight in all this is that ownership of these
improvements at the end of this lease does revert back to the
city. In addition to that
each company will also contribute approximately
$7.5 million towards our runway program.
And so we have runway four left to two
right that needs some improvements and each
company will be contributing toward that.
And then that adds to approximately half of the
cost that this improvement would cost us
with us then having to go to the airlines for the remainder
of the contribution to be able to make this improvement.
But ultimately these contributions,
as I stated earlier, do help the community, right?
As we said, Signature is right along Central
Avenue, right across from homes.
Atlantic is along 63rd Street, again in front of
some homes. But anyone that drives around the airport, whether it's
community members, folks that are flying in and out of Midway, they will
see these new facilities and this new look for Midway.
As Amber stated, we are entering our centennial celebration
in May. We acknowledge the fact that that was when Midway
Airport opened. December of next year will be when the
airport was first dedicated in the city.
So to be able to have these leases and these improvements and
contributions come at this time is I think quite
timely and very exciting for us.
So this next slide shows you Atlantic's development.
So the teal section is the existing lease
area. So again, Atlantic is located along 63rd Street.
And so the teal is their current facilities.
And what we are looking to add to the lease is everything that
is in purple
So in addition, just to be clear.
Yes. So it will be in addition to what is already there.
So the entirety of the new lease is all
of the sections, both teal and purple.
This next slide shows you Signature.
Again, this is along Central Avenue.
The area highlighted in blue is the existing leasehold,
and then the new leasehold, or what will be added to the lease,
is the triangle that's highlighted in red.
So again, the new lease will consist of both the existing leasehold
in blue and the triangle in red.
What needs to be highlighted in this is that by
us adding the additional space, it does create more usable space,
and as a result, does result in more rent toward the
city.
But I do want to highlight that this does not impact our airport
operations. So these are spaces that either
weren't being used, as in, for example, the triangle space
in Signature, and as well as in Atlantic, it was
space that we were letting Atlantic use.
But overall, it does not impact any of our operations to
continue to operate Midway Airport.
And so with the companies making these improvements,
again, it really does highlight the importance of
general aviation at Midway. And I think it's
really exciting to have all of these new structures and new buildings
because it will continue to showcase Midway
as it should be showcased on the southwest side of the city.
Amber?
Great. Thank you, Elizabeth. So now I want to hand it off just for a brief overview
to each of the two companies. They're going to talk to you about their development
plans and their business model, their labor practices, their
existing spaces at Midway, and what they give back to the community.
So I'll start with Atlantic. And so Jeff, take it
away. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Let me know when you'd like me to advance the slides.
Okay, perfect.
Yeah.
Thank you. Well, first of all, thank you for allowing us to come and present
to all of you today. And speaking as someone who
lived and worked in aviation here in Chicago for more than 25 years at a certain
commercial airline you may have heard of, I know how important your
work is, and I also know how valuable your time is
with all that you have to do. So we'll try to be efficient and to answer any of the
questions, of course, that you have.
As Amber and Elizabeth already mentioned, Atlantic Aviation is
a large, very established airport
services provider
and infrastructure provider. And we've served Midway Airport
for 27 years. It's interesting that while not in
May, our 100-year anniversary is next September, I believe it is.
So maybe we can find a way to celebrate together.
So we've been around
a long time. Atlantic has, if I do say so,
a great reputation in the marketplace.
I think it's been very hard-earned
by many folks that came well before me.
And that reputation has to do with really world-class delivery
of, first and foremost, safety.
Period. Hard stop. If it's not safe, if we're not moving things around
properly, nothing else matters. But also really top-notch
facilities and really top-notch hospitality as an
important front door
for this city.
As Amber mentioned, we have a lot of traffic that flows through these
facilities at Midway, ranging from dignitaries
to all sorts of business types, to celebrities and
entertainers that do things at Soldier Field and so forth.
And we take that very personally and very
seriously with what we do.
Atlantic,
we operate campuses across 109 airports
in North America. And as you can see from the map, our span
really ranges from Fairbanks, Alaska in the north over to-- we have six
locations in the Hawaiian Islands.
We go as far south as Saint Martin, as far east as
Bermuda, and pretty much everything in between, and that would include all
of the very large markets, such as the one here at Midway, and this
is truly a flagship location for us.
We understand how important
first impressions are, and you'll notice on the previous page, look
at it later, that we're very proud of the Net Promoter Score.
I can say being in travel for
more than three decades at this point in time, that score goes from negative 100 to
positive 100, by the way. We run an 87 here.
We strove for that. We would have died for that at other companies.
But we're very proud of the product we provide.
We want to continue to do that here, and that takes continued investment, which is
what we're
more than willing to do. So why Atlantic?
Quickly, couple of points. We have the scale, we have the experience, we have the
resources, we have the capital backing to do what's required, and the know-how
to do this. We do this all across North America.
I talked about the approach before.
We believe in delivering unreasonable hospitality, is what we call it.
It's a very important front door, and once again, I take that personally, we take
that very personally. We're equally strongly
convicted in sustainability and the
environment. I'll touch on it again in a moment.
But we have a division that supports EVTOLs, which is electrical
vertical take-off and landing machines.
We're partnering with Joby, Archer, Beta, all of them.
I think this is a wonderful prospective market for that, and we're working very
closely with them to see how we could bring something like that to life in this
market as well. And the one last but not least,
the targeted impact on the local community.
I take this extremely personally.
We take this personally, and what I mean by that is you could talk
an easy game when it comes to community engagement and things like workforce
development We do not have any interest in doing things superficially
here. We have what Dawud will touch on is a wonderful workforce
development program working with the Chicago Public Schools and city
colleges, and this will ultimately parlay itself
into apprenticeships, internships, full-time
employment for the wonderful world of aviation.
Not only for us, but for our colleagues all through the city
here both on the private side as well as the commercial
side. So more to come on that, but big emphasis for us.
In terms of the program we've been working on with the Department of Aviation,
we would deploy what will ultimately be north of $60 million
in capital
for improvements. I'll touch on a few of them here from the photo.
So the top two show the
main passenger terminal where we take care of those flying on the
aircraft and those that are piloting and crewing the aircraft, as well as
the charter terminal.
Now on our side of the airfield, the structure is actually quite good
so we don't need to raise these structures but they do require a facelift
and that's what a considerable amount of this
investment will be is to facelift those to make sure they're
contemporary, they have the Chicago
flavor
and spirit to them and we very much look forward to doing that.
The upper right is the EVTOL. We'll be putting down
electrical charging infrastructure and working with them
not only here but with Chicago Department of Aviation and others to
see what a network might interestingly look like in
this particular market. On the bottom you can see we'll be building a new
30,000 square foot hangar. There's a shortage of hangar space
on this particular airfield in this market.
Along with that comes office space and much better
passenger automobile parking
with that for easier ingress and egress.
And then ultimately lower right, and very importantly, while
it doesn't get the fanfare it sometimes deserves, we will be
redoing every inch of the ramp space on this
expanded lease area. It's in need.
It is not easy to do. And a very small portion of it will be
a deep mill and overlay for the light aviation aircraft.
The vast majority of it will be reconcreted
so it's a brand new ramp with a very long life ahead of
it which it's in need of. So that's a part of the investments that we'll be making
in this program. I'll turn it over to Dawud to share more comments.
Excellent. So as Jeff mentioned, our motto is
local everywhere. And that is a deep part of not
only our operating philosophy but also our perspective on
the role of private aviation in the community's infrastructure.
We recognize that we are one piece of the aviation puzzle.
But as a part of that piece our impact and effort can't stop at the walls of the
FBO. So we've got a deep commitment to high impact community engagement
spanning across the bases where we operate.
One example of that is a program we are currently in the middle of with
Barrington Irving and the Flying Classroom where we brought 18 CPS
students in to run a training and development program, give them
real hands-on technical training, give them exposure to private
aviation, give them exposure to the airport.
These are opportunities for people who live close by, who
live in the communities that are serviced by these airports but who may not even
understand what opportunities exist, that private aviation exists,
what general aviation means. And so this is a
component of a longstanding commitment we've had to local
community engagement. We've worked deeply with the Chicago Public
Schools over the last two years to develop and customize this
program for the city of Chicago and expect to continue to have
impact, as Jeff mentioned, both in terms of training and exposure but also
internships and other opportunities in aviation to build the
workforce for the city.
And like we mentioned this is-- You can go to the next slide.
Yeah. Sorry.
This is a continuation of a longstanding
commitment that we've had to the city of Chicago and our local community
engagement.
As we mentioned earlier, our general manager, Bernard,
is a son of the city of Chicago. He began as a line service
tech, has been trained and developed and is now an area general
manager. And the local everywhere piece is bringing the national
expertise that we have throughout the country,
amplifying the impact that our local team has been investing in the
city throughout. And so this is just one
component of the kind of multi-pronged approach we've had to community
engagement over the last decade or more.
And what we believe is that feeds into the workforce that services our
operation.
Go to the next one.
So as we said, the workforce investment, we are only as good as the
employees who service our facilities.
We've got a deep commitment to high paying quality jobs.
I think our current workforce is an example of the development and
investment we've made. Atlantic's company-wide program of Build
Better Leaders where we take our national expertise, we bring them
into our headquarters, provide skills
training, management training. Not just for high level leaders
like Bernard and others. Going down the leadership chain to
our line service managers, our operations managers, et cetera.
And we believe that continued investment is what a
key member of the community should be and should reflect.
And we also see as experienced in our actual
output, our workforce reflects the communities we work in.
Our facilities reflect the community from a physical perspective.
The dollars we invest goes into the communities we operate in and
we believe that shows up as an output of the people who work here
and the types of managers and leaders who lead our
organization. The statistics are there and we're happy to provide any
additional information or insight you guys want.
And so we thank you for your time and appreciate the opportunity to come present
to you today
Thank you, Jeff and Dawud. And I'd like to hand it over to our colleagues at
Signature. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Chairman and Aviation Committee members for the
opportunity to talk to you a little bit about Signature and
what we are going to propose or have proposed to the city.
First, just a little bit of an overview of Signature.
From a scale perspective, we're the largest operator of private aviation terminals
in the world. We have over 217 locations with
approximately 2.5 million operations annually.
We're in 27 countries as far as Asia and Hong
Kong into Africa, as well as
Europe and the United States, of course, with 140 locations
in the US.
With that, we have 6,000 global team members,
75 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel.
Signature has led the way in sustainable aviation fuel.
We were one of the first to bring it on board and
continue to lead in this product and
bringing it to the global marketplace.
That is coupled with the 6,000 employees delivering
volunteer service around our network.
Like our colleagues at Atlantic, we take being part of the
community as one of our core missions.
Our folks are based and live in the communities they serve, and as a
result, they want to give back to the communities, and we do everything we can to
support them, and that results in 15,000-plus
hours in last year.
In
overall, again, just talking about the 140 locations in
the US, it's important to note that Midway is an important front
door, not only for
our network, it is for your community as well.
It actually is within the top 10 markets in private
aviation in the world, and that in itself just is a
important need for us as we look at the facility.
It is aged out. There is a lot of work that we
are excited to get started on to build a proper front
door for the city of Chicago and for the folks that use that
facility. It's also, unfortunately,
has been constrained just by the scale of airplanes that want
to come here. We have not been able to service all of them.
And so this also allows us to be able to
serve all the customers that want to come to the city of Chicago, and
so again, another reason for us wanting to
continue to grow our presence in Chicago.
So what is it for us? We're actually going to spend about $100
million in investment for the city of Chicago.
We have some significant work to do.
If you look at our footprint at the Midway Airport, it is
a collection of facilities that have been built over time
that have, unfortunately, been placed
in awkward ways that don't offer the most
best opportunity for parking airplanes and efficient, safe
operations. And so this is a reset that we're going to be able to do.
We're going to be able to take down some of the infrastructure and rebuild it, and
as well, as they were speaking about, add some additional
needed capacity to be able to safely operate on the
field. And so that will result in about 400,000
square feet of additional ramp and allow us, of course, to store airplanes, but
also to operate a lot more safely. Two new build,
8,000 square foot and a 12,000 square foot terminal that we will be
building. Both of those will be LEED
Silver certified. We'll replace our aging hangars.
Those were built in 1970s. Those hangars are also will be LEED
certified and 100,000 square feet of aircraft
storage. So again, a much, much different picture
for
Chicago and specifically Midway and our operation.
Additional office space and then customs.
We are also gonna build a new customs facility.
That'll be a 2,500 square foot customs facility.
Again, as your front door for the city of Chicago, when people
come internationally, they will come through a facility that is appropriate
for the city of Chicago, and we look forward to being able to put that as well in
place for your international arrivals that come into the
city. And then parking. Right now, currently, we have a shortage
of fixed parking available to the customers that want to use the
facility, and so we are constrained and end up providing
an inconvenience, unfortunately, to the customers just based on the current
constraints, and this will alleviate those constraints in the future.
So what is the 100 million investment? We talked a little bit about it.
If you go through the detail, we're happy to share more with you if you'd
like. But ultimately, it is building out that infield in the
call it the dotted yellow hash that they were speaking about
earlier. This is a significant expansion of our ramp and really
allows us to more efficiently operate on the phase two and
three operations. The reason we're doing it in phases is just allow us to continue
to maintain continuity of operations while we reset
the appropriate operational parameters and be
able to operate efficiently and safely while we
construct the new ramp, which will ultimately give the city of
Chicago, and specifically Midway, a much, much better
operation and be able to support more operations.
Here's a picture of the facilities.
These are both our artist renderings and these are the new--
This is the new facility, the air side terminal view.
So if you arrive on an airplane, this is the view you'll see.
And then arriving by vehicle to depart on your flight, this will be the
land side view.
I'm going to just quickly talk about our people.
Of course, we have 6,000 employees in our organization.
Very proud of them all. We just recently were awarded a Great Place
to Work for 13 countries. We would have qualified in all
27. However, they have a cutoff. If you have less than X amount of
employees in a market, you can't qualify.
So, this is all the eligible countries that we
operate in. We were one Great Place to Work, and so very proud of that
accomplishment, and that was just awarded to us a couple of weeks ago.
With that, I'm going to hand it over to Bridget, who's going to take you through
the next few slides.
Thank you.
So I also want to just highlight, we have a lot of internal development programs
for our team members. We have general manager training programs,
management development, workforce development, where we move people
around for large scale events to get more experience, et cetera.
We had 435 internal promotions just last year.
I, in fact, started as an intern with Signature 18 years ago and
have grown within the organization in different areas.
And we have 150 team members here in the state of Illinois, so
we have a large presence in the state as well.
You can go to the next slide.
Specific to Chicago Midway.
Thank you.
We are a proud union supporter. So we have 43 total team members.
70% of our workforce is unionized with IAM District
142 union.
Through our capital development project of 100 million, we're
expecting about 350 union construction jobs to be created
through that capital development plan.
We have competitive wages. Our hourly range is between $38 to
$21 an hour. Average annual salary
for salaried employees is about 100K, and that
includes bonuses between 10% to 40% of base
salary for managers. We've got, like I said,
representation of the local community at 50% of our employees
are City of Chicago residents, with 84% living
in Cook County. And average tenure is about six and a
half years, with 70% diversity in the local team.
And then with the impact to the community, as Tony
talked about, that's a core
element of what we believe in as an organization is giving back to our local
communities. So we have a program called Signature Serves,
which we're instituting 4 cents per gallon.
So the revenues that we make here in Midway are going to go back to the community
here in Midway. So as of the signing of the lease, we have
350,000 that we're committing to local organizations, and
then this will continue in perpetuity at the 4 cents per
gallon that we will continue to contribute to local organizations,
specifically education, children, workforce development,
again, that are impacting organizations or communities
in and around Midway. And that equals about 10.7
million over the length of the lease term.
Thank you. And so with that, I would just say we are excited to
certainly modernize and improve the vital infrastructure of the city
of Chicago,
specifically at Midway. We have wanted for a long
time to redevelop those facilities, so we're appreciative of the support of the
Department of Aviation, and they've been fantastic partners with us as
we've developed this plan and look forward to your support. So thank you.
Thank you, Tony and Bridget.
And thank you, Chairman and council members.
Just in summary, on behalf of Commissioner McMurry, we're very excited
about these opportunities. We've worked very hard with both companies individually,
to come up with some good terms that we think really reflect the
prominence of Midway in this industry going forward, and
we urge you to support this ordinance. Thank you.
Thanks, Amber.
Before we open up for questions, can I have a motion to accept the substitute
ordinance
2026-002-6369?
Alderman Sposato so moved.
And just for folks to know, a copy is included in your packet,
and we also have some copies of leases if people want to review.
I'd also like to add
Alderman Dowell is on virtually, Rule
59. Thank you,
Chairman Dowell and Alderman Robinson would also like to be added
for the quorum.
Are there any questions from committee members? Alderman Quinn.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate your leadership on this item.
We heard from Signature about
the union portion.
Is that the same for Atlantic as well?
So no, our workforce at Midway is not unionized.
We have unionized workforce in other locations, but our employees haven't chosen
the union.
Your workforce is not unionized at Atlantic. Okay.
Not at Midway, correct.
Okay. And the construction that's going to happen,
will that be union?
Yeah, we made a commitment that both with respect to development,
local developers, local planners, and union workforce for the construction.
Okay.
We talk about being a part of the city of Chicago and the fabric.
Right across the street at 63rd Street, the people that live in those homes, those
are all union folks.
And so,
I don't want to be the wet blanket here, but I think it's really
important, if you're going to
be
part of the City of Chicago, be a part of it 100%, and that's
actually hiring union folks, letting them become union.
I think that's real important. You can't have it both ways.
And so, if you're going to be a part of the city, let's do it 100%.
That said,
I'm grateful being the alderman of the 13th Ward
and having these two
companies doubling down on the city of Chicago.
I said it last month at City Council, when I was growing up, I
was riding my bike through the terminal at Midway. It was a ghost town.
So to have this sort of investment is
really, really important to our community, it's really important to the city.
And in some respects, it's diversifying away from
Southwest.
It wasn't too long ago that ATA walked away from Midway Airport
and sort of fell apart, and we were kind of left holding the bag.
So, I'm grateful for the investment.
I think this is a great improvement for the city and for the community, so thank
you very much.
Thank you, Alderman Quinn. Alderman Lee.
Thank you, Chairman. And I'll echo some of what my colleague just
said. Jeff, it's nice to see you.
Yes.
We were former colleagues, and actually, were you there when Ted was at Midway?
I don't know if that was part of your tenure or not.
You'd have to tell me the years. It's been a while. Yeah.
You were there longer than I was. Anyway,
great to see you. I remember because Alderman
Quinn and I are about the same age, so I remember what Midway looked like back when
we were kids. It was not a fun airport to be in.
I think it was being generous at one point where people
referred to it as kind of an armpit of an airport.
It is not that anymore. And by virtue of the fact that we have
both of your fine companies
wanting to renew leases for 20 years and making such significant investments
into it,
we're grateful as a city for it.
I also want to applaud your community engagement efforts.
Jeff knows this is what I used to do at United, so I'm really pleased to see
what you're doing. Those are really meaningful things.
I know Jeff from his
charitable efforts as an officer at United.
That's how we knew each other. But
that work is so important because we know that for the
industry to continue, there needs to be a good pipeline.
And if the industry's not focused on that,
everybody's going to miss out. These are great paying jobs.
Echo the sentiments on the union front.
Chicago is a union town, and I think creating more opportunities for good paying
jobs, where you don't necessarily need a college degree.
We know that there is a great need for maintenance,
airplane mechanics, and the like.
So the more you can do with that, please, let's make that instead of 18
students, let's make it 40 next year.
Okay.
And on the $0.04 per gallon, what a great
and
innovative way to really tie your
commitment to the community to the success of your business.
So, really applaud that. I just wanted to say thank you.
I don't really have any questions. Just appreciate all of the investment.
Anytime people want to invest in the city of Chicago, I'm grateful for it, so thank
you.
Thank you.
Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Alderman. Alderman Curtis.
Thank you, Chairman.
First I would like to thank Department of Aviation for
sending two of their best to
represent Department of Aviation, Amber and
Elizabeth. I
was just sitting here looking at all of you on the panel, and
it's funny to see landlords
tell tenants that they're going to raise their rent and they still smile.
Yes. Department of Aviation make it so easy to work for.
They are so awesome.
I've had the pleasure,
for the last couple of years, to work with
Atlantic.
I remember
working with the general manager, Bernard.
We
work with Department of Aviation. We started a summer program.
We went from
high school to Daley College, right into aviation.
Had a couple of summers with the kids.
You have a
very
awesome-- The hospitality there is amazing.
I brought my entire staff there
just to hope that they get what you're
giving.
You guys are very, very
special in what you do. I haven't had the pleasure of
working with Signature yet, but I hope to do
that in the near future. I know that
the terms was expiring, and I can't wait
to,
especially with Signature, because I've already tasted a little bit of
aviation.
These guys are wonderful. And in the near future, I'm
looking forward to working with you for the next 20 years,
to come over and
see what you have to offer.
Excellent.
Thank you so much.
Alderman, we look forward to hosting you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.
Thank you.
Alderman Sposato.
Thank you, Chairman. My colleague just stole my thunder.
Is that exactly what I wanted to say?
Want to thank the Department of Aviation, especially Amber.
Every time we see Amber, it's always good news.
Oh, hey.
I always got a smile on your face, y'all. You always have good things for us.
She's looking out for our best interests, so you know what?
I'm going to tell the mayor to give you a battlefield promotion, so great job.
Thank you.
Just want to say welcome, guys. Happy to have you. Happy to have you here.
And if there's no other questions, I would move to pass.
Yeah.
Any other questions from committee members?
Alderman Sposato with a motion
to pass item
2026-002-369. All
in favor?
Opposed? In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
The do pass recommendation of this ordinance will be reported out at the next city
council meeting tomorrow, Wednesday, July 15th, 2026.
In closing, I just want to say
thank you. Thank you for investing in our city.
Thank you for choosing us when there were other options.
We look forward to working with you for the next 20 years plus.
Nice work,
CDA.
There being no further business before the committee, can I get a motion to
adjourn?
Alderman Lee so moves. And all in favor?
Opposed? In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it.
The meeting of the Committee on Aviation is adjourned. Thank you, everybody.