Rolling Meadows mayor hopes to ‘keep both the Bears and Springfield accountable’ on infrastructure

With the game clock ticking on the General Assembly’s spring session that ends Sunday, Rolling Meadows Mayor Lara Sanoica said Wednesday she continues to lobby state leaders so her town has a “seat at the table” should the Bears become the city’s next-door neighbor.

During her annual state of the city address Wednesday, Sanoica doubled down on recent asks for a say about the type of infrastructure upgrades that would be needed around a Bears stadium at the team’s 326-acre property in Arlington Heights.

And like her counterparts in Palatine and Schaumburg — Jim Schwantz and Tom Dailly, respectively — Sanoica reiterated her frustration that the NFL club’s consultants haven’t yet completed a transportation/traffic study more than three years after the team acquired the former Arlington Park site.

“The Bears specifically asked for $850 million in infrastructure improvements to support their development, but they have not substantiated where that number came from, or what that number is for,” Sanoica said during the midday luncheon hosted by the Rolling Meadows Chamber of Commerce at Meridian Banquet & Conference Center. “Part of our legislative agenda is to keep both the Bears and Springfield accountable.

“And we have partnered with Palatine and Schaumburg to demand that any regional improvements associated with an Arlington Park megaproject be supported by a traffic study and regional recommendations.”

To that end, Sanoica further suggested the Bears redevelopment — or any other big-ticket project in the state seeking public funds — go through a state-run local municipal planning organization. In the northeastern Illinois region, that would be the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

“The Bears do not have this level of experience, so our solution was to leverage CMAP’s expertise to make qualified infrastructure improvement recommendations that the General Assembly and state of Illinois trust,” Sanoica said.

After the local mayors’ formal correspondence to Gov. JB Pritzker, Senate President Don Harmon and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch was detailed last week in the Daily Herald, Pritzker said discussions about Bears-related infrastructure should be a conversation between the municipalities and the team.

Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia also promised the other mayors would get a seat at the table.

The team’s request for public dollars for roads, utilities and site improvements in and around the old racetrack site is among the unresolved issues in Springfield as lawmakers stare down a midnight deadline Sunday night for the current session.

Significant changes to the so-called megaproject bill — which would allow the Bears to negotiate tax payments directly with local governments over a 40-year period — are being discussed behind closed doors in an attempt to earn more votes from skeptical state senators, after an earlier version passed the House 78-32 more than a month ago.

Sanoica and the other mayors still remain supportive of a Bears move to the Northwest suburbs; indeed, she was one of the speakers at the Feb. 11 rally hosted by pro-Bears business coalition Touchdown Arlington, just as Indiana had entered the fray to lure the team across the border to Hammond.

“We are always watching and we are always making sure that we are part of the solution when it comes to the Arlington Park development,” she said during her address Wednesday. “I’m looking over at my staff to see if we have any text messages from Springfield — the answer is not yet. But we are starting to have a next step after this week depending on the actions of the Senate and the House.”