Great Lakes Cities

[PoshSteve]

Yes, its coming up again for Cleveland's lakefront airport to be shut down. We have these discussions regularly, but this time the mayor's office is supportive. It's brought up all the time that we should just follow our big brother Chicago's lead and take some bulldozers to it in the middle of the night!

[Steely Dan]

Guys, we're moving on from the tiresome, and increasingly off-topic, Canada vs. USA —.

Now back to our regularly scheduled Great Lakes programming!

[Docere]

Yeah, it was a terrible idea. Pearson Airport is a 20 minute trip from Union Station via the Union Pearson (UP) Express. There was no need for it.

[Steely Dan]

All three of these small lakefront airports at Chicago, Cleveland, and Toronto were bad ideas.

There is virtually unlimited flat land in the Great Lakes region to build airports upon, and some knuckleheads in the past were like:

"Hey, I have a great idea, instead of building an airport on any of the other 8 billion acres around here, why don't we take these precious 200 acres of limited lakeshore land and totally waste 'em with a do-little airport?"

"Brilliant!

"Genius!!!"



Thank god the worst of the thinking back in the bad old days never got off the ground:

An airport in the lake: How Mayor Richard J. Daley’s ambitious plan failed to take flight

[PoshSteve]

The Cleveland lakefront airport, Burke, was originally kept busy by the Fed bank branch downtown. When checks were prevalent, they needed the close access to an airport for getting them out in a timely manner. Time was money. Now with ACH and electronic payments, the Fed doesn't need the airport like they did and traffic has dropped off.

Not sure what Chicago's Fed did or if there is anything similar in Toronto, but could that be a reason why these cities have these airports and similar places like Detroit, Buffalo and Milwaukee do not?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by PoshSteve

Not sure what Chicago's Fed did

I don't know either, but Google AI says Meigs Field in Chicago was not used to move checks.

Google AI: No, Meigs Field was not used by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago to fly in or move paper checks. That logistical role is commonly misattributed or confused with other downtown waterfront airstrips like Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport, which historically handled check-processing flights.

[Docere]

Toronto's island airport dates back to the 1930s. During World War II, it was used as a training facility for the Norwegian air force.

The baseball stadium at Hanlan's Point (where the Triple A Toronto Maple Leafs team played) was demolished for the airport. Babe Ruth (then playing for the Providence Grays) hit his first home in his professional career run there.

[benp]

Originally Posted by PoshSteve

The Cleveland lakefront airport, Burke, was originally kept busy by the Fed bank branch downtown. When checks were prevalent, they needed the close access to an airport for getting them out in a timely manner. Time was money. Now with ACH and electronic payments, the Fed doesn't need the airport like they did and traffic has dropped off.

Not sure what Chicago's Fed did or if there is anything similar in Toronto, but could that be a reason why these cities have these airports and similar places like Detroit, Buffalo and Milwaukee do not?

Buffalo did have a sea-plane airport from the late 1920s to early 1930s just north of downtown at what is now Ralph Wilson Centennial Park. It lasted until the winter of 1932-33 when ice remained longer than expected, grounding the planes, and eventually the owners relocated the planes and facilities to San Diego.

Buffalo's Short-lived Marine Airport

Boat Launch and Seaplane History

Up through WW2, Buffalo was a major aircraft manufacturer, and besides Buffalo and Niagara Falls Airports there were also small airfields located within the city limits in North Buffalo and on the East Side where newly-built planes were launched and tested.

[Docere]

How many Great Lakes cities have a ski hill in city limits?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5JNnfKc12M

The elevation of Earl Bales ski hill is 183 m (600 ft) Not quite the highest point in Toronto which is in the city's northwest near York University, 209 m (685 ft).

The Lake Ontario shoreline is 75 m (245 ft), so from the lake to the highest point is 134 m/440 ft.

[Steely Dan]

Chicago, sitting on former lake bed, not only doesnt have any ski hills, it doesnt even have regular hills.

Thats not entirely true as there are some small hills down in Beverly.

Chicago has a lot of cool aspects, but topographical variation aint one of them.

This — is F-L-A-T.

[iheartthed]

What cities have ski hills even outside of the Great Lakes? I didn't know that existed in Toronto but I don't think I've ever seen that in any city.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

What cities have ski hills even outside of the Great Lakes? I didn't know that existed in Toronto but I don't think I've ever seen that in any city.

Toronto's ski hill is a quirk of the size of Toronto. It's a city-owned recreational facility, managed by Parks and Recreation, which primarily existed to give kids on local public schools a place to learn how to ski. I don't think it speaks to a particular ski culture in Toronto.

I'm not comparing Toronto to NYC, but one thing these two cities have in common is that they go a step above even the other very large cities by using their size to offer their citizens unique opportunities in recreation, schooling, libraries, etc. What helped Toronto was amalgamating into a borough system in the early 1950s so that it could centrally plan and use a tax base of over 2 million people in the 1960s and 1970s when these kinds of civic initiatives were at their peak. NYC doesn't have a ski hill, as you know, although if they had an easy site to access and had reliable snowfall, maybe they would?

Chicago might have this mindset too, but I don't really see it in the Sunbelt municipalities that are 1.5 million +. LA is almost infamous for having very few neighbourhood parks. Maybe a city like Detroit had it until its tax base began collapsing? I don't know.

[Wigs]

Good job, Canada

• Video Link

The new bridge is expected to take 44.5 per cent of the commercial traffic that passes through the Windsor-Detroit corridor, according to a January filing from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security establishing the route as an official port of entry.

Given a third of all trade that happens between the U.S. and Canada passes through this corridor, the bridge could have some serious benefits for the economy writ large.

Canada and the U.S. already ship about $1 billion daily through the Windsor-Detroit corridor, according to an estimate from Invest WindsorEssex, making it the busiest international land border crossing in North America.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/economic-benefit-gordie-howe-bridge-9.7281466

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

NYC doesn't have a ski hill, as you know, although if they had an easy site to access and had reliable snowfall, maybe they would?

I can imagine the city of New York running a public ski run but I can't imagine where it would fit lol.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

What cities have ski hills even outside of the Great Lakes? I didn't know that existed in Toronto but I don't think I've ever seen that in any city.

Pittsburgh has municipal downhill skiing at Boyce Park, which is technically in Plum Borough just outside city limits.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Toronto's ski hill is a quirk of the size of Toronto. It's a city-owned recreational facility, managed by Parks and Recreation, which primarily existed to give kids on local public schools a place to learn how to ski. I don't think it speaks to a particular ski culture in Toronto.

I'm not comparing Toronto to NYC, but one thing these two cities have in common is that they go a step above even the other very large cities by using their size to offer their citizens unique opportunities in recreation, schooling, libraries, etc. What helped Toronto was amalgamating into a borough system in the early 1950s so that it could centrally plan and use a tax base of over 2 million people in the 1960s and 1970s when these kinds of civic initiatives were at their peak. NYC doesn't have a ski hill, as you know, although if they had an easy site to access and had reliable snowfall, maybe they would?

Chicago might have this mindset too, but I don't really see it in the Sunbelt municipalities that are 1.5 million +. LA is almost infamous for having very few neighbourhood parks. Maybe a city like Detroit had it until its tax base began collapsing? I don't know.

That's a good point. The City of Toronto is quite extensive in terms of its services and functions, even though it remains a "creature of the province." (Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, thankfully couldn't get federal approval for his hare-brained airport expansion. But he does seem to act like he's the modern-day equivalent of the Metro Chair as well as the Premier).

It looks like the City of Toronto employs about 70,000 people, the second most of any Northern American city after NYC. This includes 43,000 in the public service, 16,000 at the TTC, 7500 police plus Toronto Community Housing, the Toronto Public Library, Toronto Parking Authority, Exhibition Place etc.

NYC is closer to a "city-state" - employing about 290,000. It includes even more functions, such as corrections and its own department of education (though MTA is NYS-controlled). New York is of course kind of known for its clashes between the NYC mayor and Governor (Koch-Cuomo, Giuliani-Pataki, De Blasio-Cuomo etc.)

Chicago seems to be at a smaller scale. 32,000 public employees. CTA (a separate agency) employs about 10,000.

[Docere]

Toronto even had its own Robert Moses-type figure in the first chairman of Metro Toronto, Fred Gardiner (for whom the expressway is named).

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

Chicago seems to be at a smaller scale. 32,000 public employees. CTA (a separate agency) employs about 10,000.

City of Chicago - 30,300
CTA - 11,400
CPS - 45,500

Total - 87,200

[Docere]

Chicago Public Schools is a separate entity though and its employees are not city employees, no? Though maybe that's a distinction without a difference.

[Steely Dan]

City of chicago, CTA, and CPS are different entities, but they are all local "government workers".

Making direct comparisons between cities on how many "city workers" they employ is usually pretty apples to oranges because different cities divy up these things differently.

And often times, government services handled at the municipal level in one place are handled at the county level in a different place, and vice versa for other services, further muddying the waters.

Surface level comparisons are usually pretty meaningless. You gotta get into the nitty-gritty to make it matter.