Speaking of ‘Plan B’
Bears making it clear Arlington Heights should be looking for new options for Arlington Park property
Chicago Bears executives and city officials went all-in Wednesday in announcing a radical departure from not only the team’s interest in a suburban location for a new stadium it would own but also its previously stated preference for a privately funded development surrounding it.
Instead, the officials proposed a massive $4.7 billion lakefront campus built around a new publicly owned domed football stadium toward which the team is offering to put up $2.3 billion.
Since taking over leadership of the team while the ink was still drying on the Bears’ purchase papers for the former Arlington Park property in Arlington Heights a year ago, CEO Kevin Warren has made no secret of his sentimental preference to locate the new stadium in the city. Wednesday’s proposal was the strongest indication yet of how far he, Bears Chairman George McCaskey and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are willing to go to make that vision come true.
It may not be a complete abandonment of the former racetrack property the team spent $197.2 million to purchase, but it at least sends a message to officials in Arlington Heights and surrounding communities that now is a good time to begin lining up new ideas for the future of the 326-acre site.
That is not to say that the die is cast for a lakefront stadium development. The advocacy group Touchdown Arlington emailed supporters that they believe the suburban project could still be on the table, though Arlington Heights Mayor Tom Hayes acknowledged that option is now Plan B for the Bears.
The new Plan A, of course, faces serious obstacles, not least of which is its reliance on going on $2.5 billion in support from state taxpayers as well as siphoning funds from nearby venues in the Museum Campus location. Both prospects received chilly receptions from Gov. J.B. Pritzker and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, whose support for public contributions to the project is critical.
“We have important things we need to invest in for the future of the state, and again, stadiums in my mind don't rank up in the top tier of those,” Pritzker said Thursday.
Nor likely in the minds of many Illinoisans. Almost any development of this scope in any location, whether in the landlocked suburbs or on the urban lakeshore, will require some level of outside support, but the public's appetite for subsidizing a wealthy National Football League franchise's entertainment palace is understandably not strong. Will that be enough to shift the Bears' attention back westward? It certainly leaves open a path to negotiation.
Speaking of which, it seems important to note that highly publicized disputes over taxes between the Bears and suburban school districts that would be affected by an Arlington Heights stadium development are not really a factor in this latest development. The school districts have repeatedly said they were close to agreement and anxious to settle, and Hayes emphasized Thursday that, Warren's vague complaint about “disagreements” notwithstanding, it wasn't taxes that pushed the Bears back to the city.
“That's really not the issue,” Hayes told our Christopher Placek. “The issue is Kevin Warren really wants to stay on the lakefront.”
That sentiment has been clear practically from the start of Warren's tenure with the Bears, and it was on full display at Wednesday's news conference. Warren and Johnson stressed that they hoped to sway reluctant lawmakers in the coming months. That may be a heavy lift for them, even taking into account Warren’s veiled threats that costs are rising with every month’s delay. But whatever challenges they face, it's going to take some serious disruption to turn the team's head back toward the suburbs.
All adding up to suggest that it's time now for Arlington Heights to begin identifying its own Plan B for the former Arlington Park property.