Arlington Heights or Hammond? Bears stadium decision expected before end of summer, Warren says

Bears President/CEO Kevin Warren said Monday he expects to know late this spring or summer whether the team’s new football stadium will be in Arlington Heights or Northwest Indiana.

“We don’t have a set deadline, but I am confident that sometime this spring/summer, we’ll know,” Warren said Monday during an interview with NBC Sports’ “Pro Football Talk.” “I mean, we have to know, because we would have completed the due diligence in Indiana, and we’ll see what happens in Illinois.”

The head of the Bears’ front office made his first public comments about the ongoing interstate stadium saga in months while in Phoenix for the annual NFL owners meetings. Warren and team Chairman George McCaskey are expected to take questions from the media on Wednesday.

Warren said “legitimate” due diligence continues for a stadium site near Wolf Lake in Hammond regarding traffic, transportation, construction and more. The process comes after Indiana lawmakers last month passed legislation to create a public stadium authority to acquire land, issue bonds, build a stadium, and lease it to the Bears for at least 35 years.

The Illinois General Assembly went on recess Friday as closed-door stadium negotiations continue with top legislative leaders, Bears brass, Gov. JB Pritzker and Arlington Heights officials. Legislation that would give the NFL franchise a tax break at its 326-acre property in Arlington Heights still doesn’t have the requisite 60-vote minimum in the House over concerns with taxpayer impact and making Chicago whole from the 2003 Soldier Field renovation debt.

The House is back in session April 7 and the Senate returns April 14. Both chambers adjourn the current spring session May 31.

Warren on Monday didn’t specifically mention those key dates on the legislative calendar, but is likely aware.

“Late spring, it has to,” Warren said of a decision point on stadium matters. “Especially if you look, I’m always intrigued by the financial markets, the capital markets, those are something that we have to focus on. This is challenging work now from a legislation (standpoint), but the real work comes in the construction,” said Warren, reiterating that building costs will go up $150 million a year.

He noted the two sites being eyed for a new stadium — Arlington Heights and Hammond — are in the NFL club’s home marketing area, and all but ruled out keeping the team in or around downtown Chicago.

“We strongly believe the only site in the state of Illinois and Cook County is Arlington Heights,” Warren said. “Because when you see that property, having 326 acres with the train station there, the things that we would be able to do.”

He admitted there was no “appetite” for a new publicly-funded stadium south of Soldier Field that he and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson pitched to Pritzker and legislators in 2024. And Warren said other sites “just don’t fit” — a likely reference to the former Michael Reese Hospital property in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, where Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and other boosters have tried to get the Bears to take another look.

Having a mixed-use development surrounding a stadium is “imperative,” Warren said, so “you got to have that space to be able to do it.”

“It brings a heartbeat and a certain kind of vibrancy to that city. And of all cities that could use it and need it is the Chicagoland area,” he said.