‘More than a dozen meetings and … a dozen months’: How the Bears stadium approval process might look

Arlington Heights village officials and Bears brass are meeting behind the scenes to finalize a site plan for the 326-acre Arlington Park property before unveiling those sketches publicly and kicking off a municipal approval process expected to take at least a year.

Mayor Jim Tinaglia said he is talking at least a half hour every week with team President/CEO Kevin Warren on Zoom — while their respective staff of planners, engineers, lawyers and consultants have meetings of their own — to determine the precise location of the team’s domed stadium on the sprawling site, as well as other aspects of what would be one of the largest redevelopment projects in Illinois history.

“We’ve been in this roller coaster ride of, ‘Are we out in Arlington Heights or are we down in Chicago?’ And now we’re back in Arlington Heights, and all indicators are that they are 1,000% focused on only Arlington Heights,” Tinaglia said. “So we’re looking at it with that level of sincerity that we think everybody is on the same page.”

“And so now the focus is: Where is the end zone? What does it look like? What does the site look like? What do the finances look like? What does traffic look like?” he continued. “And as soon as we have that where we as a small group can all agree that it makes good sense, then we’ll tell them, ‘OK, go sell it to the neighborhoods.’”

During an interview last week at the Arlington Park Metra station — just steps from the old racetrack property now owned by the Bears — the mayor outlined next steps in what is expected to be a detailed and lengthy local review process.

Like any other construction project that requires governmental approvals in Arlington Heights, the Bears are first trying to obtain a preliminary, positive village staff recommendation for the proposed stadium and mixed-use entertainment district.

The Bears would then host a series of neighborhood meetings to show drawings and blueprints, similar to the September 2022 meeting at John Hersey High School where the team’s original $5 billion Arlington Park redevelopment proposal was revealed.

The new plans will assuredly be different from the old ones, though nothing has been finalized, said Tinaglia, who has seen various concepts for the site.

The designs for a proposed Chicago lakefront stadium — shown during an April 2024 press conference, before the NFL club’s shift back to Arlington Heights — will be copied and pasted onto the suburban site, Tinaglia confirmed.

Officials are also discussing the timeline in what is expected to be a multiphased, multiyear redevelopment project. First priority is breaking ground on the stadium on a one-third portion of the property, while the remaining two-thirds could host restaurants, a hotel and a Bears Hall of Fame, among other ideas.

“There have been ideas bantered about, and the master planners that the Bears have hired have ideas and opinions on what should happen and where it should be and so on,” Tinaglia said. “Our planning department, engineers, management and I have opinions on how it should be. And I think it’s going to take a little time yet to fine tune that and come to an agreement that we all say to each other, ‘OK, we all agree this is the best approach.’”

After community meetings to solicit public feedback, the village board will host a non-binding early review of the project. Then it will be formally considered during official public meetings of the village’s appointed, advisory boards — including the design, housing and plan commissions — with final approval coming back to the elected nine-member village board.

Tinaglia and trustees ultimately will take a vote on a master plan overlay district — essentially, giving zoning permissions for a town within a town.

The entire process could take “more than a dozen meetings and more than a dozen months,” Tinaglia predicts.

It’s all expected to begin in the coming months, Tinaglia said, but he’s unsure if it will start before the end of the year.

Warren has set out an aggressive construction schedule, even boasting in a letter to season ticket holders last week that the team wants to host a Super Bowl in 2031.

While builders wouldn’t be able to break ground until obtaining all village approvals, Tinaglia said they could apply for a demolition land permit to even out the site. After the racetrack’s structures were demolished, the remaining terrain is a mixture of trees, bushes, grass, dirt and asphalt.

The new mayor, a professional architect for 34 years, said he isn’t having a heavy hand on the stadium design itself.

“I have not been a pain in anybody’s backside, but I have shared an enormous amount of input with relationship to site plan, with relationship to access, and perspective of how this whole site will behave,” he said. “I even went so far as to tell them at one point, ‘I sit on the other side of the table way more than I sit on this side of the table as a mayor, and I can help you make good decisions that I know are going to be received better than if you just come through the process like a bully.’”

“And I know the Bears don’t want to be a bully,” Tinaglia added. “They want to listen. They want to do what everybody believes is right.”