The Bears have possibly put the cart before the stadium.
Although the team recently said that it has shifted its focus (again) from Chicago to Arlington Heights, the powers-that-be in the suburban village are essentially reciting Lee Corso’s catch phrase.
On Monday, Arlington Heights mayor Jim Tinaglia said there’s no done deal with Da Bears.
“When and if the Bears do make an announcement that they are coming to Arlington Heights with certainty, there’ll be a process that is going to begin, and there’ll be an enormous amount of opportunity for every resident and business owner to become educated and participate in all the dialogue that’s going to happen,” Tinaglia said during a village board meeting on Monday night, via Christopher Placek of the Arlington Heights Daily Herald. “And this entire board — believe me when I tell you we’ll all have something to say.
“And it will be wonderful or it won’t be. We’re all committed to work for our neighborhoods here and make sure it’s a great project if it’s going to happen, but we’re still waiting on that to happen as far as the direction.”
The Bears weren’t on the agenda for the Monday night meeting. The topic came up in response to comments made by local stadium skeptic Keith Moens.
“It looks like the billionaire Arlington Heights Bears have no other place to go — right back here to Arlington Heights,” Moens said. “We’re in the driver’s seat as a village right now. This is an opportunity to negotiate even more funds for education, for desperately needed available and affordable housing, for infrastructure investment, for public works, for public health and for safe streets — all in exchange for the massive property tax subsidies that will be given to the Bears later on.”
Moens is right. The Bears have abandoned their primary leverage by closing the door on staying in Chicago. Advantage, Arlington Heights.
Still, the possibility of a new stadium isn’t dead in the waters of Lake Michigan. As noted by the Chicago Sun-Times, the city is waiting and watching for the possibility that the Arlington Heights deal will fall through.
“You’ve got to solve a lot of stuff,” senior mayoral adviser Jason Lee told the Sun-Times. “You’ve got to get a term sheet executed. There’s . . . legislation they’re hoping to get out of Springfield that would give deeper tax incentives throughout the life of the project. . . . There’s no development deal done, or even in formation. You’ve got 365 acres. There are significant, significant infrastructure needs. And it’s not clear that the local community is actually invested in the type of development they would want to do . . . to make that site economically feasible. There’s not support for public infrastructure at that site.”
However it plays out, the Bears won’t get any help from Illinois. Which makes it hard to land the plane in either place.
For now, the plane is still trying to get off the ground. All the Bears can do is go back and forth between runways.