Play clock ticking: Bears won’t wait past March for stadium deal, Arlington Heights mayor says

Next week is a “big, big, big” week for hopes of a Chicago Bears stadium in the suburbs as state legislators return to Springfield to debate a tax break and other financial incentives, Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia said Thursday.

If no deal is reached by the end of March, the NFL club may not wait longer and depart for Northwest Indiana instead, Tinaglia suggested.

“Waiting until the end of May I think is a no go for the Bears,” Tinaglia said during a state of the village address, his first since his election nearly a year ago. “They’ve already been through the (wringer) too many times.”

Arlington Heights officials, the Bears and their lobbyists have circled next Wednesday on their calendars when the House returns after a nearly three-week break.

Legislation that would give the NFL franchise a tax break at its 326-acre property in Arlington Heights advanced out of a House committee Feb. 26, but legislators adjourned before the measure got a vote on the full House floor.

Though Tinaglia admits he and Village Manager Randy Recklaus were skeptical of the Bears-backed megaproject bill’s chances last year, the mayor said Bears brass believed it would have passed, and were disappointed when it didn’t.

Now the tone and political calculus may have changed in Springfield, Tinaglia believes. The House returns the day after primary elections, and Indiana is “the new kid in town,” he said.

“When you’re being asked to vote on something that is as massive as keeping the Bears in Illinois, it is important to get that election over with first so there’s not so much pressure on that political process,” he said.

Chicago legislators’ initial resistance to the Bears-friendly bill was out of hopes to keep the team in the city, Tinaglia said.

Then came team President/CEO Kevin Warren’s announcement last December that the stadium search was expanding to Indiana amid lack of “legislative partnership” in Springfield. Just days later the Kansas City Chiefs secured a deal to move across state lines from Missouri to Kansas, Tinaglia noted.

The Warren announcement — on the eve of a big game against the rival Green Bay Packers — was criticized by some as “crazy” at the time, Tinaglia said, but the temperature quickly changed.

“The Bears aren’t just kidding around. Maybe they would consider going to Indiana,” he said. “Since that happened, it’s been a whole different tone.”

Tinaglia and Recklaus meet regularly with Bears leadership, including Warren, Chairman George McCaskey and Karen Murphy, the team’s executive vice president of stadium development and chief operating officer. A recent hourlong Zoom meeting was held to discuss the upcoming week in Springfield.

Bears officials have been largely mum about the interstate stadium saga, only releasing short statements after Indiana legislators advanced stadium legislation and saying that progress continues during negotiations in Illinois.

McCaskey and Warren were in Des Plaines Wednesday for the annual Ed Block Courage Award luncheon at Manzo’s Banquets, but haven’t taken questions from the media for months.

During his speech Thursday morning at Metropolis Ballroom in downtown Arlington Heights, Tinaglia said he believes the Bears have “been getting a bad rap,” but also “are not the greatest in public relations.”

“I spend a lot of time talking to those guys,” Tinaglia said, “and I can tell you that I know they want to come here. They can’t come here unless they get some help from Springfield on this.”

The bill would allow the Bears or any developer spending at least $500 million on a project to negotiate property tax payments directly with schools and other local governments for up to 40 years.

Tinaglia was asked by an audience member if those taxing bodies are on board with such an arrangement. Indeed, the Bears, village and three school districts whose boundaries encompass the vacant Arlington Park property already have a memorandum of understanding that reduced the team’s annual tax bill from $16 million to $3.6 million. Now they’re lobbying together for state permission “to identify what that number should be” long term, Tinaglia said.

Another audience member asked: How about neighboring communities Rolling Meadows and Palatine? At his state of the village address last week, Palatine Mayor Jim Schwantz raised concerns towns like his would have to take on debt to help pay for infrastructure surrounding the Bears project.

“We have worked really hard with Mayor (Lara) Sanoica in Rolling Meadows and Mayor Schwantz in Palatine, two really, really good people that have a lot of interest in this,” Tinaglia responded. “Traffic is going to go through their towns. … We’ve included them with almost everything that we do because we want to be respectful of that. And when it comes time to really sit down and talk about brass tacks, they’ll have a seat. They’ll have an opportunity to weigh in on everything.”

Though a site plan for the entirety of the sprawling property hasn’t been finalized — and the project still faces local zoning review and approvals — Tinaglia suggested at least a ceremonial groundbreaking could be held as early as this summer.

The domed stadium could take three years to build, while the adjoining mixed-use district — including hotels, restaurants, residential, office and medical space — might take 15 years to come to fruition, Tinaglia predicted.