While slamming Chicago mayor for having ‘no plan,’ Pritzker optimistic about Bears stadium deal in Arlington Heights

With less than two weeks to go in the General Assembly’s spring session, Gov. JB Pritzker expressed confidence Monday that megaproject legislation that could bring the Chicago Bears to Arlington Heights would get done.

“That’s in the legislature’s hands, as you know,” Pritzker told reporters before an unrelated event Monday morning at a downtown Chicago hotel. “I put the structure of a deal together with the Bears, and now the Senate has some work to do. They’re going to make changes to the bill, no doubt. I would expect that we’ll see something before May 31, and that both houses — the Senate and the House — would vote on that.”

Pritzker, holding his first general media availability in weeks following a urological procedure May 1, also leveled criticism at Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, saying he has “no plan” to keep the Bears in the city.

The pointed comments reignite a sometimes tense relationship between the two politicians. The fellow Chicago Democrats appeared together Wednesday at an event touting the city’s bid for a Democratic National Convention repeat in 2028, in what was Pritzker’s only other public appearance this month.

On Friday, Johnson pitched a proposed city takeover of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority — the state agency that financed the 2003 renovations of Soldier Field — in an attempt to keep the NFL franchise in town.

“The mayor has no plan,” Pritzker said. “He’s come up with no plan at all about how the Bears would end up in the city of Chicago. So that’s problematic. I’d love them to be in the city, but we are three years in now, and he still has no plan. The Bears have said publicly … that they have now only two options, and that’s the state of Indiana or Arlington Heights. We would like them to stay in the state of Illinois, and so I’m fighting hard to make sure that they can do that.”

Pritzker also took issue with Johnson’s lobbying visit to Springfield in early May — where quashing a Bears suburban relocation was on the mayor’s agenda — saying the visit was “late in the game” of the legislative calendar.

“In fact this is kind of typical,” Pritzker said. “The mayor has shown up every spring at the end of session to pronounce what he would like to see happen.”

Johnson backed the Bears’ proposal in 2024 for a publicly owned domed stadium on the Chicago lakefront, which would have required $2.4 billion in public funds for a three-phased, $4.7 billion redevelopment of the Museum Campus. But the plan, which required legislative authorization to extend ISFA bonds, was dead on arrival in Springfield.

In a statement following Pritzker’s comments Monday, the mayor’s office continued to back that plan.

“For the past two years, the city has continued to advocate for a publicly owned stadium and has not supported the advancement of a privately owned stadium. The city’s proposal remains the only plan centered on public ownership alongside a funding mechanism that does not burden property taxpayers while keeping the Bears in Chicago.”

Pritzker’s unprompted remarks about Chicago’s mayor came after he was asked a question about three Northwest suburban mayors who want a seat at the table in discussions over Bears stadium infrastructure. The request of the mayors of Palatine, Rolling Meadows and Schaumburg was detailed in a story in Monday’s Daily Herald.

“That’s a conversation between those municipalities and the Bears,” Pritzker said.

Bears brass is expected to brief fellow owners on the stadium search Tuesday during the NFL’s spring league meeting in Orlando.