Whether stadium is in Arlington Heights or Hammond, McCaskey says he’s ‘good either way’

Bears Chairman George McCaskey cautioned reporters Wednesday to avoid using “trite and tired” football analogies when describing the team’s yearslong stadium saga that now pits Arlington Heights versus Hammond, Indiana.

But the one-time Peoria television news reporter himself couldn’t resist.

“Just as the course of a game, things ebb and flow. They go back and forth. Sometimes there is great momentum on one side. Sometimes the momentum shifts suddenly to another side,” said McCaskey, speaking to reporters at the conclusion of the annual NFL owners meetings in Phoenix.

“I’ve said to our family: we need to be patient and let the deal come to us. We think a deal will materialize somewhere. We’re comfortable with either site. And we have people at the Bears working with public servants in both Indiana and Illinois trying to get this done.”

The Bears chairman declared he’ll be “good either way” — should the team build on its 326-acre property in Arlington Heights, or a 340-acre site currently being eyed near Wolf Lake in Hammond.

McCaskey, who made his first public comments in months about the organization’s search for a stadium site, was peppered with questions about family legacy and what his grandfather George “Papa Bear” Halas would think about a stadium in Indiana.

Halas started his football career in 1919 with the Hammond All-Stars, who played home games at what was then known as Cubs Park, McCaskey noted.

“He was on a decades-long quest himself to find the proper stadium solution,” McCaskey said.

“I don’t think, in the end, it’s going to matter to people,” added McCaskey, referencing the New York Giants’ departure to New Jersey in 1976. “When the Bears moved from Wrigley Field to Soldier Field, it required an adjustment. When we went to Champaign, it required an adjustment. And whether we go to Arlington Park or to Hammond, there is going to be an adjustment period. People are going to have to be allowed some time to get used to it. I think Bears fans are up to it.”

Bears President/CEO Kevin Warren has set a tentative timeline of late spring or early summer to decide on the Northwest suburbs or Northwest Indiana. The Illinois legislature — currently considering the Bears-backed megaproject legislation — adjourns its spring session May 31.

Since Warren in December decried a lack of “legislative partnership” in Springfield and announced the football club was expanding its stadium search to Northwest Indiana, lawmakers in Indianapolis approved a legislative framework to create a public authority to acquire land, issue bonds, build a stadium, and lease it to the Bears.

The arrangement would allow the team to be renters of a publicly-owned stadium in Indiana — and not have to pay property taxes — as opposed to being land owners in Arlington Heights, and it’s why Bears brass has sought preferential tax treatment from Illinois lawmakers.

The so-called Payments in Lieu of Taxes bill being debated in Springfield would allow the Bears and other big developers to negotiate tax payments directly with schools and other local governments for up to 40 years, though critics have questioned the potential impact for other taxpayers.

Also meeting reporters Thursday in Arizona, Warren was asked how he could convince still-skeptical legislators, and whether he was meeting with any of them to get the needed votes.

“I think one of the things that’s important, just from an experiential standpoint, is to make sure the lawmakers, the politicians, have a chance to handle their business in a manner that they can handle it in. And so I think that’s something that we’ve stayed away from,” Warren said.

Earlier, he declared: “We don’t look at this as a political exercise, per se. We look at this as a business transaction.”

He reiterated the team wouldn’t be able to build a stadium in Illinois without “tax certainty.”

But McCaskey was later asked why the team didn’t have that secured before closing on its $197.2 million purchase of the former racetrack in 2023.

“We didn’t control the timing of the acquisition of Arlington Park,” he said. “(Owner) Churchill Downs was in a position where they were ready to sell, so they largely determined the timing.”

Whether it be Arlington Heights or Hammond, the team has promised to put up $2 billion toward construction costs — money, McCaskey said, that will be borrowed “because we don’t have it.”

He also seemed to be aware of the legislative timeline in Springfield.

“When the process is completed in one place or the other and we have a deal to consider, then we’ll look to see where we are with the other situation, and we’ll make a decision,” McCaskey said.