O'Donnell: Fight over Bears at Arlington Park grows as CDI sends statue to Saratoga

BATTLE LINES ARE BEING intensified between some residents of Arlington Heights and elected village officials over the specter of the Chicago Bears building a new stadium at Arlington Park.

The divide began moving toward accelerated mass on Tuesday — the anniversary of The Declaration of Independence.

That's when a lifelong townsman named Tom Svoboda stood publicly on the Fourth of July parade route with petition in hand, seeking signatures to prompt a recall vote targeting village president Tom Hayes and trustee Jim Bertucci.

Svoboda, as reported by Chris Placek of The Daily Herald, is aiming for a most severe sanction of Hayes and Bertucci over what he perceives as a lack of due diligence and suspicious village acquiescence in the rush to demolish the main grandstand at Arlington.

THE OBSCENE UNDERPINNING of it all was drawn further on to the village center spit Wednesday when Churchill Downs Inc. announced that it was “donating” the iconic “Against All Odds” statue from the doomed track's paddock balcony to The National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York.

There are those who would vociferously argue that the statue — which depicts the great John Henry's mythic nose victory over The Bart in Arlington Million I — forever belonged in Arlington Heights.

Instead, CDI's Bunker Bill Carstanjen and cohorts made the extraordinarily gratuitous gesture to hand over the Edwin Bogucki sculpture to the lightly trafficked Racing Hall.

With a slick reference to the late Dick Duchossois — the final chairman of Arlington Park — Carstanjen noted: “Much like Mr. Duchossois, 'Against All Odds' represents perseverance.”

All while the prime perseverance of Carstanjen and CDI represents cash-guzzling casino capitalism.

THE SVOBODA INITIATIVE against Village President Hayes and Trustee Bertucci is rife with nuance and complexities.

It's also an unfortunate residual from the Bears' increasingly clumsy attempt to leverage their ownership of the 326 acres that once housed Arlington into the best financial deal for their new play palace somewhere in the Chicago region.

According to Placek's report, close to 6,600 signatures — 12% of the registered voters in Arlington Heights — will be needed to effect a vote over the continuation of Hayes and Bertucci in their current elected offices.

That task in itself is enormously uphill, a reality Svoboda quickly acknowledged to The Daily Herald Wednesday.

“That would be difficult anywhere, but particularly so in a keep-your-head-down suburb like Arlington Heights,” the 58-year-old Indiana University graduate said.

LIKE HAYES AND BERTUCCI, Svoboda has clear standing as a vital and informed individual with a textured overview of the village's culture and history.

Joseph Svoboda Sr. — his grandfather — opened a doughty men's clothing store in 1953 near the corner of Dunton and Campbell Streets. Father Joe Svoboda Jr. kept it going until 2004 despite Woodfield to the west, the once-vibrant Randhurst to the east.

Tom Svoboda, in his words, took “The Jimmy Garoppolo Track” — Westgate Elementary School, South Middle School and Rolling Meadows High School (Class of '83).

“I understand Arlington Heights and I understand what good and bad governance is,” he said. “This is nothing personal between Mayor (sic) Hayes and I. My main concern is that he has been led down an unfortunate path by Churchill Downs (Inc.) first and now the Bears.

“I strongly feel that the Bears and the city of Chicago will end up making a deal for a new stadium. The new mayor (Brandon Johnson) is going to one day make a triumphant announcement about that.

“In the meantime, we in Arlington Heights are being used as dupes. Tom Hayes could have prevented that. He hasn't. Nor has Jim Bertucci, the most active of trustees in the matter. Perhaps one day they will resign. For the time being, my committee gives residents an alternative voice.”

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF SVOBODA'S ADVOCACY is weak.

“The Committee To Recall Mayor Hayes” has no website. Its messages and updates are posted on two Facebook pages — the more prominent being “Arlington Park Racetrack Memories.”

He declined to reveal the number of petition signatures gathered on the Fourth of July. He also declined to name “the other five members” of his committee, saying, “Some are prominent local residents who fear retribution in terms of business and otherwise. They will be announced at a later date.”

Asked if there wasn't some intermediate option on the long gray continuum from the black-and-white of doing nothing to calling for the ouster of Hayes and Bertucci, Svoboda replied: “There once was. But now, more than twenty months into all of this, there isn't. Maybe both will do the dignified thing and resign.”

THE GREAT IRONY — and the concurrent misfortune — is that it is involved people like Hayes, Bertucci and Svoboda who make Arlington Heights the crisply desirable suburb to live in that it is.

But it is also reasonable citizens such as they who could be reaching the day when it is time to tell George McCaskey and the Bears that “Your planning is too glacial and vague, your tax-certainty 'asks' are too nonsensical for a sports entertainment business worth a reported $5 billion and the increasing risk of your muscular sense of entitlement in our thriving village is far too inconsistent with our future greater good.

“Goodbye and good luck.”

That sort of freshly declared independence would flip the jumbled civic Etch-a-Sketch and bridge anew the externally manufactured divide.

• Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Thursday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.