Mystery of drone over Schaumburg solved
By Robert McCoppin
If you were in the vicinity of the Jane Addams Tollway in Schaumburg over the past couple days and thought you saw a drone hovering overhead, you weren’t paranoid or hallucinating.
It turns out that the drone was being used to survey a construction site for an insurance company.
The Swiss insurance company Zurich plans to build its new North American headquarters on 30 acres off Meacham Road on property that was formerly part of the Schaumburg Motorola campus.
The developer, Clayco, plans to use a drone once or twice a month to take aerial photos of progress on the site, said Tracey Mendrek of Culloton Strategies, which handles media relations for the project.
The Federal Aviation Administration generally prohibits operating drones for commercial purposes. But the FAA has issued only one fine over a commercial flight, and recently a National Transportation Safety Board administrative law judge ruled in that case that commercial drones don’t need FAA approval but should be treated like self-regulated model aircraft.
While the FAA is taking years to develop guidelines for unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, businesses have begun using them at low altitudes for many purposes without federal approval, including in ads and in plans for flower delivery.
Mendrek did not know whether the developer had or needed regulatory approval for the flights.
FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Cory said she couldn’t immediately say whether this use of a drone would be allowable under the current rule structure. She said the agency would have to look at factors such as where the drone flew, its altitude and its intended use. She said the agency would follow up with the drone operator.
Demolition of a small building on the former Motorola Solutions site is just beginning, Mendrek said, and construction is expected to begin in the next few months, with completion due in the fall of 2016.
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