O’Donnell: If the Bears were a publicly traded corporation, Indiana ‘wins’

FOR THOSE WITH MULTIPAGE SCORECARDS, it's now 56 months since the Chicago Bears signed a purchase agreement with Churchill Downs Inc. to claim the 326 acres that once proudly featured Arlington Park.

That's closing in on five years.

The date was Sept. 29, 2021.

Joe Biden was in his first year in the White House. Residuals of the pandemic were still in evidence. Caleb Williams was a freshman at Oklahoma under coach Lincoln Riley, an early-season apprentice behind the inimitable Spencer Rattler.

THERE WAS A FRESH BUOYANCY in the northwest suburban air.

The cynical, obscene closing of one of the most regal horse race tracks ever constructed was to be somewhat mitigated.

A land-and-team marriage first suggested by then-AP empress Marje Everett in 1968 was going to be fulfilled.

(Everett's full vision, first reported by a columnist in Field Enterprises' old Arlington Day (1966-70), was for a domed stadium “like the Astrodome” to coexist with her racing oval. Ideally, it would house both the Bears and one of Chicago's Major League Baseball teams. She was making no small plans.)

IN SEPTEMBER 2021, NEITHER, did it appear, were the Bears.

The business underpinnings of Project Arlington seemed so simple, so straightforward, that even it appeared McCaskey-proof.

The Bears would need no more than one-third of the acreage for Amazon George S. Halas Stadium.

THE REMAINING PROPERTY would serve as dream fields of gold for the McCaskey and Ryan ownership families. They would be limited only by their imaginations as they took on expert working partners and investment capital to maximize ancillary profits.

Particularly bottom-line friendly would be the prices Monster maniacs would pay to own a residence at the uber-trendy new “Bears Village.”

Homes and condos that might sell for $700,000 or so in an Arlington Heights of renewed ascendancy would fetch closer to $1 million or more as the rabid scurried to live on Ditka Drive or Payton Hill Boulevard. (Or even Cutler Cul-de-Sac.)

NOW, IN HINDSIGHT, it can be accurately stated that the high point of the Bears' endless stadium saga was the day the purchase agreement was announced.

Since then it has been nothing but a steady drip into indecision, confusion and downright embarrassment for the corporate madcaps delaying the decisions at 1920 Football Drive in Lake Forest.

The biggest “win” for the Bears in their 56 months of stadium questing has been the astounding iron-clad offer from Gov. Mike Braun and the state of Indiana.

That deal includes governmental considerations to a pandering degree and a rent-free billion-dollar stadium that the Bears can purchase for $1 after 40 years.

CONTRAST THAT WITH a state leadership in Illinois that's fragmented by regionalism, some realistic fiscal pragmatism and such minutiae as reported concerns by Gov. JB Pritzker that “losing” the Bears to the free-doling Hoosiers will look bad on his 2028 presidential resume.

The full truth is that the No. 1 road block on the Bears' turtle creek to a new stadium is the thorough lack of urgency placed squarely on the meandering George McCaskey and Kevin Warren.

The Delay 'n Defer Twins have no high-pressure monitors from above insisting on deadlines met to keep the stadium project rollin' on down the highway.

If the Bears were publicly held, with McCaskey subject to quarterly grillings by impatient stockholders, he'd be in a much more tender position to feel the steam begin to brew.

INSTEAD, HE AND WARREN LOLL ALONG behind constantly rejiggered semantics and the newest stated hopes that soft-spined pols from Arlington Heights to Springfield will lamely capitulate to demands to power drive a $9 billion sports-show business property into a region that's been doing quite well without it, thank you.

The true powers behind the NFL are undoubtedly rooting for McCaskey and associates to pursue the inescapable reality that Arlington Park is a prestige destination for their new home.

Northwest Indiana is a mere default locale. It's hungry ground and toxic air, soupy wetlands and a state of mind where enduring aesthetics were never on the checklist of founding father Elbert Gary and his U.S. Steel.

ARLINGTON PARK REMAINS a heaven-sent valedictory to the reign of George McCaskey as chairman of the Bears. He would forever be remembered as the longtime team ticket manager who overcame all perceptions to forge one of the great upgrades in NFL history.

(If McCaskey gets Arlington Park done, maybe project overseers can get the old “Against All Odds” statue back from the National Racing Hall in Saratoga Spings, N.Y., and have Enlightened George nosing out The Bart on the wire to win Billion I.)

IN THE MEANTIME, the drone goes on. The tin-cupping in Springfield has gotten numbing.

Indiana wants the Bears.

Arlington Heights will tolerate them, at least if there are no further tax-swerving “asks.”

ROMAN MIRTH AND LORE HOLDS THAT 56 months after plans for the Colosseum were announced, preferred parking lanes for chariots had already been painted and concession stands — complete with a pricey wine-and-grapes combo — were almost done.

Almost five full years after the Bears' purchase agreement for AP was in the bag, the only shovels that have been turned contain torrents of wasted words.

That initial wave of fresh buoyancy in the northwest suburbs air has devolved into a hollow southeasterly wind.

And fewer and fewer in the Arlington Heights-Palatine-Rolling Meadows triangle really care.

Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.