The Bears on Friday alienated their biggest cheerleader in Springfield — and left their Chicago partner almost resigned to their departure — by signaling that the team may be giving up on Chicago in favor of building a domed stadium in Arlington Heights.
A statement released by the Bears on Friday simply confirmed the obvious: that the team has made “significant progress” with the new political leadership in Arlington Heights and it looks forward to continuing to “work with state and local leaders on making a transformative economic development project for the region a reality.”
But, the Bears’ failure to even mention the possibility of remaining in Chicago — coupled with what they told Mayor Brandon Johnson — moved the ball closer to the site of the old Arlington International Racecourse that the team spent $197.2 million to purchase.
“The Mayor spoke with executive leadership from the Chicago Bears, who indicated they intend to prioritize the development site located in the Village of Arlington Heights,” the mayor’s office said in a statement.
But, Johnson’s statement was quick to note that, “The door remains open in the city of Chicago.”
A former University of Illinois lineman, State Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago, has been one of the few legislators in Springfield willing to block and tackle for the Bears, who want state infrastructure help for Arlington and a massive subsidy to remain and build in Chicago.
But Buckner was downright disgusted by the Bears’ decision to spurn the city and play footsie with Arlington Heights.
“They came to Springfield a year ago with a plan that got laughed out the door. They were told by the governor to come back with a plan that made sense. They were told \[the same thing\] by the speaker... They were told by the senate president to team up with the White Sox. They’ve not done that,” Buckner said.
Buckner accused Bears President Kevin Warren of “trying to marry one city and date the other.”
“They need to be honest about…where they want to be. They can’t keep playing it on all sides…They have hurt their reputation as a franchise by flip-flopping…It’s the boy who cried, \`Bear.’ “
It was just a year ago that Johnson and Warren stood together at Soldier Field to unveil their shared vision for a lakefront dome — one that has gone nowhere in Springfield, in large part because it would require more than $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies for stadium financing and surrounding infrastructure.
“They put on this big extravaganza in Soldier Field about what the new stadium was gonna look like on the lakefront without doing the work behind it,” Buckner said, of a presentation that did not include Gov. J.B. Pritzker, House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch or Senate President Don Harmon.
“Now, here we are talking about Arlington Heights just a year later as the focus,” Buckner said.
“It’s hard to believe any of their announcements or proclamations because they keep flip-flopping.”
With the Soldier Field deal stuck in the mud, the Bears rekindled talks with Arlington Heights about building the massive stadium-anchored mixed-use development on the site of the old racecourse site.
Having achieved the property tax certainty it craves with suburban school districts, the Bears have moved on to submitting traffic and economic impact studies.
The suburban site gained even greater momentum with the election of Jim Tinaglia as mayor of Arlington Heights. Tinaglia has declared nailing down a stadium deal with the Bears as a top priority.
Yet another sign that the Bears were inching closer to the northwest suburbs was the sharply-worded letter that Warren recently fired off to Johnson’s new Chicago Park District Superintendent Carlos Ramirez-Rosa.
In the letter, Warren appeared to be almost provoking a fight by complaining about a lack of communication and input that had further soured what has been a contentious landlord-tenant relationship for decades.
Warren was hired by the Bears, in large part because he helped deliver a new domed stadium for the Minnesota Vikings.
At the grand unveiling of the now-failed Soldier Field dome, Warren stressed the importance of breaking ground on a new lakefront stadium in 2024.
When that deadline came and went, the Bears president stressed the imperative of starting construction in 2025. That revised deadline became even more important to meet with the skyrocketing cost of construction equipment and materials tied to President Donald Trump’s on-agan-off-again tariffs.
A source close to the Bears said the team’s renewed interest in Arlington Heights was not about playing one side against the other.
It’s about facing political reality.
The domed stadium in a parking lot adjacent to Soldier Field faces a potentially costly and lengthy legal challenge from Friends of the Parks similar to the one that cost Chicago the Lucas Museum under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
And a Chicago dome would require the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority to issue bonds retired by an extension of the same 2% increase in the Chicago hotel tax that bankrolled a $660 million renovation of Soldier Field that won’t be fully repaid until 2032.
The massive mixed-use project that would be anchored by a domed stadium in Arlington Heights, by contrast, does not rely on the stadium authority to issue new debt or extend the hotel tax increase.
But the Arlington proposal would require legislative approval to lock in property tax rates, not to mention the infrastructure costs of expanding a two-lane highway and adding a traffic interchange to accommodate tens of thousands of fans on game days.
For Johnson, the political stakes are high.
The last thing he needs at a time when his public approval ratings are languishing in the single-digits is to be the mayor who lost the Bears to Arlington Heights.
But, it’s looking more like a situation out of Johnson’s control.
Developers of the old Michael Reese hospital site appear to have gained no ground in convincing the Bears to consider a move to their 48.6-acre site—even after releasing dazzling renderings that show a Bronzeville stadium and adjacent mixed-use development with a great lawn extending over DuSable Lake Shore Drive all the way to Lake Michigan.
Warren has dismissed the Michael Reese site as too narrow and too close for comfort to railroad tracks that bisect the site.
When the Bears threatened to move to Arlington Heights in 1975, then-Mayor Richard J.. Daley threatened to sue the team for the right to use “Chicago” in its name.
Every other mayor since then has struggled to solve the Bears’ stadium dilemma.
Richard M. Daley rebuilt Soldier Field with a ridiculed design likened to a spaceship atop the historic colonnades that cost the stadium its landmark status. And he salvaged that deal after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 with back-loaded borrowing that continues to burden taxpayers to this day.
Now, it looks like Johnson may be holding the ball as the clock runs out. His only hope appears to be that, until Springfield comes through for the Bears, the door to Chicago remains open.