Mayor still hopeful Bears will ‘reverse this ship back toward Arlington Heights’

Officials in Arlington Heights remain optimistic the Chicago Bears may again turn their attention toward the Northwest suburbs, even after team brass said Thursday they are focused on a new stadium in Northwest Indiana.

“What I didn’t hear today — there are people on the radio talking about, ‘You know, it’s going to be a big earth-shattering announcement. They’re going to change their name to the Hammond Bears, and everything is moving full speed ahead.’ And none of that is happening,” Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia said.

The mayor watched the noontime news conference of Bears Chairman George McCaskey and President/CEO Kevin Warren from afar, concluding that “the news was not anything that we didn’t expect.”

“The Bears are working hard to protect themselves and do what needs to be done there, and I understand everything that they’re doing,” Tinaglia said. “However, at the same time, I am still hopeful that Springfield and the Bears can come to terms with a bill that can be signed by the governor before it’s too late.

“And whether that’s November or February or March or May, I hope that something can be done and reverse this ship back toward Arlington Heights,” he added.

Village officials and their lobbyists in Springfield have still been pushing for some type of enabling legislation that would clear the NFL club’s path to a proposed $5 billion stadium-anchored, mixed-use redevelopment of the shuttered 326-acre Arlington Park property.

After adjourning in the wee hours of June 1 without agreement on a stadium bill, lawmakers are set to return for the fall veto session Nov. 17.

While McCaskey and Warren said conversations with Illinois legislators this summer have been “minimal,” Arlington Heights officials’ planning discussions with the Bears — held at least weekly at one point — have “slowed down,” Tinaglia acknowledged.

Communication hasn’t been cut off, however.

And just as McCaskey said the team hasn’t made contingency plans for the sprawling site they own in Arlington Heights, neither have officials at village hall.

“Once the Bears make an absolutely formal decision one way or another, then we’ll be able to respond to that. But at the moment, we still believe the best fit is the Bears,” Tinaglia said. “I am hopeful the Bears capitalize on that, number one, but if not the Bears, I am confident somebody will. Maybe another NFL team, or maybe a Major League Baseball team, or maybe something else equally as wonderful.

“If you wanted to put a couple of stadiums on there, it would be a piece of cake to do,” said Tinaglia, an architect by trade. “It’s just a matter of who will it be and when will that happen, and what does the logo look like.”

What the prime acreage won’t become, he said, is a data center campus, trucking and logistics operations center, or storage facilities site.

Ernie Rose, a local attorney who is part of the pro-Bears Touchdown Arlington business group, also maintained a hopeful tone Thursday.

He believes the Bears have made little “meaningful progress” toward resolving legal, tax and logistical challenges that would come with a move to Hammond, Indiana.

“The path to Arlington Heights remains wide-open,” Rose said. “The pieces are already in place, and there is still an opportunity for state and local leaders to come together with the Bears and make Arlington Heights the team’s long-term home.”