‘Time is now’: Bears president tells lawmakers Arlington Heights stadium won’t happen without tax break bill

Chicago Bears brass are having weekly meetings with Arlington Heights officials, in what team President/CEO Kevin Warren on Friday called an “excellent” working relationship among himself, Chairman George McCaskey, Mayor Jim Tinaglia and village staff.

But whether a new stadium gets built in the Northwest suburb hinges on what lawmakers in Springfield have to say this fall.

“It’s on us to convince the governor and the state legislators that this is a good idea for the people of Illinois, and we need to do a better job at that,” said McCaskey, addressing reporters after training camp Friday afternoon at Halas Hall in Lake Forest.

Warren said the weekly meetings with Arlington Heights officials including Tinaglia — an architect by trade — have been going on for the past couple of months, while talks with Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have all but stopped after the team’s announced shift in stadium development focus in May back to its 326-acre property in Arlington Heights.

“He understands the dynamics of what it takes to build a building and to be able to build this size of a building in the village of Arlington Heights,” Warren said of Tinaglia, who took office in May.

But Warren said the NFL club won’t be able to move forward with a domed stadium in Arlington Heights unless lawmakers approve its long-sought request for a long-term property tax break on the former Arlington Park racetrack property. The so-called megaproject legislation would allow the Bears to negotiate with local taxing authorities like school districts over the amount of taxes that should be paid on the site for up to 40 years.

“All we need is property tax certainty. And we’re not trying to avoid paying taxes. We absolutely will pay taxes. But we want to just have certainty,” Warren said.

“This is not a grant, this is not a gift,” he added. “This is not any transfer of money from the state of Illinois to the Chicago Bears or other businesses. This just says we’re going to allow you to negotiate the property taxes, which is critically important.”

A handful of bills that would have enabled such an arrangement were filed but never moved during the spring session that adjourned in May. Lawmakers were focused on the public transit fiscal cliff and other issues, and will be again during the upcoming fall veto session.

Even still, Gov. JB Pritzker and top legislative leaders have been resistant to any of the Bears’ asks for state help since 2022, whether it’s been a tax break at a privately-funded suburban stadium, or subsidies for a publicly-owned Chicago lakefront stadium.

But Warren on Friday tried to pitch the legislation not as a Bears bill — indeed, the financing mechanism could be used by other developers statewide — but as a “jobs bill.”

He said labor unions back the legislation. The team projects a stadium project would create 56,000 construction jobs and 9,100 permanent jobs.

“There were a lot of things that didn’t make it on the docket in the spring,” Warren said. “I know transit is going to be an important issue that people are trying to work on. I’m hopeful that when we get to the fall veto session, that our legislative leaders will recognize that time is now.”

While initial stadium designs have been completed by architect David Manica, the Bears have now put out a request for proposals to hire an architect of record who would work with Manica. A similar request is expected to go out for a construction manager, Warren said.

When asked about the potential of expanding the entrance and exit ramps off Route 53, Warren said the team would work with the Illinois Department of Transportation and officials in Arlington Heights and surrounding towns so that ingress and egress to the site “is excellent.”

While a lengthy municipal review process is expected at Arlington Heights village hall, Warren said initial site work could still be done this year ahead of a formal groundbreaking next year.

Also Friday, McCaskey confirmed his nephew, Edward Lawrence McCaskey, has joined the organization’s board of directors, filling the vacancy of family matriarch Virginia McCaskey who died in February at age 102.

The team chairman declined to comment on a Sportico report this week that the McCaskey and Ryan families agreed to split a 2% equity stake they bought back from the estate of the late Andrew McKenna, in a deal that valued the franchise at $8.8 billion. Pending approval by the NFL, the McCaskeys will hold 77.5% of the team and the Ryans will have 22.5%.

“We consider those matters to be private,” George McCaskey said. “The important thing as far as we are concerned — the thing that Bears fans might have on their minds or might be concerned about — is that the Halas-McCaskey family was, is, and will remain what the NFL calls the controlling owner of the team.”