This is interesting, I absolutely need to read more about Meigs Field and why it was given up forever.
Ah okay looks like all this happened because of one guy.
Some strange guy called “Daley” had a big personal issue and a huge private problem with the pure existence of a small private airfield and an place where Yachts and private sport boats can anchor in Lake Michigan - and suddenly decided to destroy the airfield overnight and impulsively in a Kamikaze-like action.
The private owned airplanes were not able to start afterwards anymore after the destruction of the runway 
The FAA and the state Michigan and America itself wanted to have this airport alive and running til the year 2030, but they forgot to make a law preventing “a private person destroying Meigs Field personally” because they did not thought that anyone would be hateful enough to really drive over there and destroy it.
Afterwards various people kept babbling on about “transforming it into animal and nature parks” blah blah - but it´s nothing but some bog wasteland with nothing living on it except some grass, not even a single animal or tree for over 20 years later:
Looks like someone was really hating private aviators and had a personal vendetta with the Yacht owners of Chicago.
Meigs Field became world famous because of earlier Flight Simulator iterations, and Meigs Field was seen in Knight Rider season 4 premiere “Knight of the Juggernaut”.