Chicago Vertiport One: A Landmark Initiative to Establish Chicago’s First Commercially Viable Urban Air Mobility Hub

eVer­tiSKY Corp is increas­ing momen­tum to intro­duce Urban Air Mobil­i­ty in the U.S. with the estab­lish­ment of Chica­go Ver­ti­port One.

The com­pa­ny has made an ini­tial offer to acquire land locat­ed with­in the opti­mal car­go flight routes of the pro­posed ver­ti­port area.

The acqui­si­tion of this prop­er­ty will play a cru­cial role in the over­all devel­op­ment plan to expand the ini­tial ver­ti­port facil­i­ty oper­a­tions and space for car­go to pas­sen­ger oper­a­tions, main­te­nance, and oth­er essen­tial ser­vices.

“Illi­nois is well-posi­tioned to quick­ly emerge as a nation­al leader in next-gen­er­a­tion avi­a­tion logis­tics tech­nol­o­gy,” said Con­gress­woman Robin Kel­ly (IL-02). “My con­stituents and I are eager to see the adop­tion of these new tech­nolo­gies and the poten­tial ben­e­fits they will bring to our region.”

The company’s approach for scal­a­bil­i­ty and inte­gra­tion with Chicago’s trans­porta­tion econ­o­my demon­strates eVertiSKY’s com­mit­ment to part­ner­ing with key com­mu­ni­ty stake­hold­ers and ensur­ing the vertiport’s inte­gra­tion into the local com­mu­ni­ty.

In Jan­u­ary 2024, eVer­tiSKY kicked off its Chica­go UAM Liv­ing Labs which began the process­es of iden­ti­fy­ing key stake­hold­ers for Ver­ti­port One relat­ed to:

Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment

Eco­nom­ic Growth

Work­force Devel­op­ment

Pol­i­cy and Engi­neer­ing

Envi­ron­men­tal Advan­tages

Com­mer­cial­iza­tion and Oper­a­tional­iza­tion

The pre­lim­i­nary busi­ness plan artic­u­lates a vision­ary approach for trans­form­ing a strate­gi­cal­ly select­ed under­uti­lized site into a piv­otal node for both car­go and pas­sen­ger tran­sit, deeply inte­grat­ed with Chicago’s exist­ing urban fab­ric and trans­porta­tion sys­tems.

Locat­ed at the nexus of major trans­porta­tion arter­ies, Chica­go Ver­ti­port One will aim to pro­vide access to the City, sub­ur­ban eco­nom­ic cen­ters, and res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties.

San­dra For­men­ton, CEO of eVer­tiSKY, empha­sizes: “The UAM Liv­ing Labs ini­tia­tive is more than just a work­ing group; it’s the gate­way to com­mer­cial­iz­ing Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) for the ben­e­fit of a city.

The data and asset spec­i­fi­ca­tions col­lect­ed through the UAM Liv­ing Labs pro­vide action­able insights for all stake­hold­ers. These insights ensure UAM projects deliv­er ben­e­fits direct­ly to com­mu­ni­ties, oper­ate with­in local pol­i­cy, and sup­port busi­ness mod­els for sus­tain­able UAM.”

eVer­tiSKY says this project will pro­vide ‘sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits to the City of Chica­go, offer­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for jobs, enhanc­ing local infra­struc­ture, and reduc­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion, there­by improv­ing the qual­i­ty of life for all res­i­dents, busi­ness­es, and vis­i­tors’.

In part­ner­ship with lead­ing urban devel­op­ers, state and local offi­cials, indus­try, and local stake­hold­ers, this ven­ture is designed to cat­alyze eco­nom­ic revi­tal­iza­tion, pro­mote tran­sit-ori­ent­ed devel­op­ment, and inte­grate cut­ting-edge trans­porta­tion eco­nom­ics with­in the City’s fab­ric.

For­men­ton adds: “These data serve as a blue­print for each city to man­age and mon­e­tize ground and air­space activ­i­ties and assets. This is vital for real-time deci­sion-mak­ing and com­pre­hen­sive UAM plan­ning.

“Addi­tion­al­ly, this data feeds into the UAM City API, which is cru­cial for devel­op­ing asset spec­i­fi­ca­tions, ground and air­space infra­struc­ture, and man­ag­ing UAM air­craft activ­i­ties.

This ensures cities have robust com­mand and con­trol func­tion­al­i­ty relat­ed to UTM oper­a­tion, enabling com­pre­hen­sive, effi­cient, and safe urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions.”

The project is set to begin a pilot project focused on car­go oper­a­tions in 2027, fol­lowed by pas­sen­ger ser­vices in 2030.