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The City of Chicago, the owner and operator of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, was awarded ownership of a 161-year-old cemetery located on the path of a future runway for O’Hare. Approximately 1,200 graves will be dug-up and moved elsewhere.

The 5.3-acre land will be transferred from St. John’s United Church of Christ to the city, providing that the city pays the church $630,000 for the land. The cemetery is in-between two segments of the new runway already in construction.

This acquisition is one of the last remaining barriers to the $15 billion O’Hare Modernization Project, which includes the demolishing of two runways, the addition of four east-west facing runways, and two extensions to existing runways. The new configuration will give O’Hare six parallel runways, similar to Dallas Fort-Worth airport. In addition to a redesign of the runway configuration, the city is expanding terminals and adding in new facilities.

This massive expansion project is expected to expand the airport’s capacity to over 3,800 operations per day, up from the present capacity of 2,700, and will decrease delays by an estimated 79 percent.

Most of America’s airports have found the need to expand in recent years, providing a challenge to airport owners and operators to get the land necessary and prove to locals expansion’s value. Initially, DuPage County was not on-board with the expansion, but their feelings swayed the other way upon hearing that the project would create jobs and stimulate commercial development.

With this hurdle out of the way, O’Hare could likely top the list for world’s busiest airport in the foreseeable future.