Daily Herald opinion: Naperville's entry in Bears stadium sweepstakes emphasizes how much remains to be done
The prospect of a suburban home for the Chicago Bears NFL football team took an intriguing turn Friday with the announcement of a high-level meeting between the Bears and the city of Naperville.
Only days earlier, the Bears began demolition at the 326-acre Arlington Park site they just spent $197.2 million to acquire as the possible location for a new domed stadium and $5 billion business and entertainment complex.
But even as the heavy equipment was rolling into 2200 W. Euclid Ave. in Arlington Heights, the new mayor of Naperville Scott Wehrli was reaching out to the Bears to let the team know it had other options. And the team's executives, as might well be expected, said they are willing to listen.
There are precious few sites in the suburbs with the kind of development space Arlington Park offers, and Naperville wouldn't be one of them without substantial demolition at an existing developed location. But the lure of a $5 billion complex can justify re-evaluating a lot of already developed sites.
So, there is a foreboding undertone in a Bears statement Friday declaring that Arlington Park "is no longer our singular focus." Not just for Arlington Heights and the surrounding areas, which, assuming a host of infrastructure and financial issues could be resolved, were developing visions of a transformational opportunity. But for all the suburbs.
Anyone with the barest understanding of suburban development easily recalls the location pitches and town-vs.-town competition that became commonplace among shopping center developers as the suburban population exploded over the past five decades.
The entry of Naperville into a Bears stadium sweepstakes surely complicates a picture that already included the city of Chicago - where officials no doubt would be quick to insist Arlington Heights was not the Bears' "singular focus" even before Friday.
And that complication serves primarily as a reminder of how far there is to go before a Bears decision is final, how much needs to be done in that time and how much can change. For Naperville, Arlington Heights and any other starry-eyed suburb - not to mention the city of Chicago as well - this also emphasizes how easy it can be to become a pawn in a high stakes game of business negotiations and therefore, how important it is to know, if they want this opportunity, what specifically they want to do with it and what they're willing - and not willing - to give up to get it.
By now, suburban leaders ought to be familiar at least with the ground rules of the game and the potential gains and losses. The meeting between the Bears and Naperville on Friday may well be a warning for them to make sure they're not going to let their communities' interests become secondary to those of the Bears.