New pitch made for Bears stadium along South Side lakefront
The team attempting to build Bronzeville Lakefront, a proposed megadevelopment on the former location of Michael Reese Hospital, unveiled a new vision Thursday for the site, including housing, retail, hotels and a possible domed stadium for the Chicago Bears.
It’s the third group of developers in as many weeks to announce a plan to bring the team to the South Side. The scramble to work up Chicago stadium proposals comes ahead of next week’s fall veto session in Springfield, where state legislators will meet and likely vote on several proposals designed to keep the Bears in Illinois.
The South Side proposals have so far drawn cool responses from the Bears, who seem intent on moving from Soldier Field to either suburban Arlington Heights or Hammond, Indiana. The team did not immediately comment Thursday on the latest stadium proposal involving the Michael Reese site.
GRIT Chicago, the consortium of developers and investors leading the Michael Reese project, said their vision answers criticisms leveled by the Bears that several proposed South Side locations are too narrow for a football stadium or would encroach on existing housing or rail yards.
The consortium proposes to combine their 48-acre Michael Reese plot with Golub & Co.’s Prairie Shores high-rise apartment community to the west and the McCormick Place Marshaling Yard to the east, more than doubling the site to 100 acres.
“More than once, what we’ve heard from the Bears is that the stadium would not fit on the Michael Reese site,” said Quintin Primo, executive chairman of Capri Investment Group and newest member of GRIT Chicago. But with this expansion, “there is no reason the Bears and the NFL should not choose the Bronzeville site as their new home.”
The central component of the developers’ $10 billion proposal is more than 5,000 new residential units in or near the district, including about 1,000 affordable homes, senior housing and on-campus residences for students at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
A 75,000-seat stadium would occupy 30 to 40 acres just west of DuSable Lake Shore Drive on 31st Street, all linked up with a new Metra train station, a new CTA Green Line station, and a collection of park space, hotels, retail, offices, other commercial development and McCormick Place Convention Center.
“The mayor has told us he wants housing and we’re giving it to him,” Primo added.
GRIT Chicago also includes Farpoint Development, McLaurin Development Partners and the community developer Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives.
The developers said they couldn’t divulge any details about conversations with Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has been receptive to relocating the Bears to the South Side lakefront, or talks with other bigwigs like Gov. JB Pritzker.
“We have talked, and will continue to talk with everyone,” said Zeb McLaurin, CEO of McLaurin Development Partners.
Pritzker and state legislative leaders all say it’s the Bears who will ultimately decide where they play. Legislators will next week start debating several proposals they hope will convince the team to choose an Illinois location. One measure calls for freezing property tax assessments for an Arlington Heights stadium, and another creates stadium finance authorities in either Arlington Heights or Chicago. That would allow the team to build a stadium on public land and spare it from property taxes.
Regardless of what the Bears decide, GRIT Chicago needed to rework its original vision for Bronzeville Lakefront. The developers first won city approval to redevelop the Michael Reese property in 2021, but their original plan, heavily focused on attracting world-class medical researchers, stalled out after the pandemic.
Adding Primo to the project gives GRIT Chicago more financial heft and experience, and helps make the new vision for Michael Reese possible, said David Doig, president of Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives.
Capri Investment Group and Primo help lead the team currently redeveloping downtown’s James R. Thompson Center into Google’s new regional headquarters.
If it would help the Bears decide in favor of Bronzeville, Primo said he and other “global investors” were willing to buy the former Arlington International Racecourse in Arlington Heights, which the team purchased for $197 million in 2023 as a stadium site and mixed-use district.
GRIT Chicago already has a commitment from the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, the owner of McCormick Place, to incorporate the marshaling yard into the new development, Primo added. And two of the Prairie Shores high-rises will be preserved, with the others, totaling about 1,000 units, replaced by modern units reserved for families currently living at Prairie Shores.
“Our plan will help finally spur development on a number of these vacant parcels,” Primo said.
Several community leaders and local elected officials said they supported the new GRIT Chicago vision.
“With or without the Bears, this community deserves investment that strengthens the people who live here,” said Chris Harris, senior pastor of Bright Star Church and CEO of Bright Star Community Outreach. “Families should stay in their homes until the new homes are ready.”
Other hopeful developers putting forward plans for a new stadium include Sterling Bay. The company’s CEO Andy Gloor, along with real estate developer Carl Williams, the father of Bears star quarterback Caleb Williams, made a surprise informal pitch to Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren about a possible stadium in the Bridgeport neighborhood. That would require the White Sox to leave Rate Field for a proposed South Loop ballpark, but the Bears said they declined to pursue the plan.
Another potential new player in the Bears stadium game is Related Midwest, which recently proposed a domed facility adjacent to the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park it is developing at the former South Works site.
Related Midwest, which is also building the new $750 million Chicago Fire soccer stadium at The 78, its mixed-used megadevelopment in the South Loop, introduced the South Works Bears stadium proposal last week.
The developer is looking to cleave off up to 200 acres of the technology campus to build the Bears stadium and ancillary amenities such as restaurants, coffee shops and bars that would boost the region and dovetail with the quantum park.
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