What's next for the Bears after their stadium bill stalls in Springfield - Chicago Sun-Times

Wolf Lake Memorial Park, near the 2300 block of Calumet Avenue, is near a potential site for a Chicago Bears stadium in Hammond, Indiana. SHARE COPY LINK Share Bears executives woke up Monday morning with a decision to make — that is, if they slept at all after a long, disappointing night in Springfield. At 3:39 a.m., the Illinois Senate passed a bill that would have allowed municipalities with at least 70,000 residents to create their own financing authorities for a stadium — and eliminate the Bears’ property tax bills. The House adjourned for the summer before sunrise Monday, though, without voting on the bill that would have enticed the Bears to build their domed stadium in their home state. Hours after the failed Hail Mary, Gov. JB Pritzker said his “principles have remained intact” throughout the five-year stadium saga. “The reality is that I wasn’t willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money in order to give it to a billionaire-owned family, or team, and believe very much that the incentives that we provide for businesses are to be similar to the incentives we provide to this type of business,” Pritzker said. The Bears said Monday they still planned to decide between the Arlington Heights and Hammond, Indiana, sites in late spring or early summer, a timeline they set earlier this year. The Bears don’t make any major decisions, including firing coaches, without the input of their board of directors. The stadium is no exception. Any decision would come only after the board meets, likely this month. The seven-person board is made up of chairman George McCaskey, president/CEO Kevin Warren, secretary Pat McCaskey and four members: Brian J. McCaskey, Edward L. McCaskey, Ed McCaskey Jr. and Aon founder Pat Ryan, a minority owner. The Bears’ timeline is self-imposed; the lease at Soldier Field, their home since 1971, doesn’t expire until 2033. If the Bears decide to leave Illinois, though, Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott expects them to move quickly. “If July 1 rolls around and Hammond doesn’t know for sure, I don’t think that’s a good sign,” McDermott said. On April 1, George McCaskey said the team had a legislative framework in place in Indiana but needed to evaluate the Hammond site, while it owned 326 acres in Arlington Heights without property tax-relief legislation. The Bears have since assigned consultants, attorneys, utilities specialists and environmental lawyers to Hammond as due diligence. Without tax-break legislation, though, it’s unclear if the Bears have a full picture to ponder in Arlington Heights. Or whether they’d be willing to wait any longer for one. “There’s only one offer on the table,” McDermott said, “and that offer is from the state of Indiana.” A source close to the Bears said the General Assembly is “clearly calling the Bears’ bluff” and daring them to move to Indiana. “If they really want to build a stadium, I don’t know that they’re going to be able to build a stadium in Illinois,” the source said. “They’re not going to get what they want here without extracting multiple pounds of flesh. “It really just shows you how dysfunctional things are in Illinois. The fact that they’ve been trying to get a stadium for three years, they pass a bill in the House, we wait weeks and weeks and weeks for the Senate to tell us what they think they’re going to do and then, the Senate files a bill at 11 o’clock at night? It wasn’t serious. They’re checking a box.” Hammond is the only choice “if the Bears really want to build a stadium,” the source said. “If you don’t really want to build your own stadium, then start having conversations and work on how to fix Soldier Field.” George McCaskey said in April that playing in Indiana was something Bears fans would get used to, were that the path the team chose. He cited the New York Giants moving to New Jersey in 1976 — and, along with the Jets, deciding to stay there when MetLife Stadium was built nearby in 2010. “Somehow, the Republic has survived,” McCaskey said. After the Bears’ push for a megaprojects bill that would have allowed them to negotiate property tax savings failed Saturday, House Bill 958 became a literal eleventh-hour legislation effort that would have put Chicago and Arlington Heights on equal footing when pitching the Bears on a stadium. Although the Senate bill authorized municipalities within Cook County to create their own stadium authorities, Mayor Brandon Johnson said there’s no need to do that in Chicago. The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority already exists for that purpose. So does the 2% hotel tax increase that bankrolled Rate Field and the much-maligned 2003 renovation of Soldier Field. Johnson met with the Bears six weeks ago and remains open to doing so again. Johnson said there’s “no plan for Arlington Heights” or how revenue would be generated there. The Bears have insisted Arlington Heights and Hammond are their only two choices, though. Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia called the lack of a deal “clearly a fumble for the state of Illinois.” He said the village remains open to future redevelopment proposals from the Bears. Chicago-based sports marketing consultant Marc Ganis argued the only path forward for the Bears is to sign a stadium lease as quickly as possible, then announce the move to Hammond. “It’s self-evident that the Bears pursue the Indiana option that’s already been legislatively approved,” he said. “ Chris Welch said, ‘We’re going to talk about it over the summer.’ What are they going to talk about that they didn’t talk about the last five months? They had five months to get something done. They wasted it all and decided to put everything into the last few hours and didn’t get anything done. … Is this any way to run a state government? No f - - - -ng way.” The message that Illinois lacks the leadership and political will to get things done was not simply delivered to the Bears. It was also delivered to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the league-backed stadium-loan program, Ganis said. “They will be very helpful for the Bears to be in Indiana because there is no option in Illinois,” he said. “No pressure is needed . Just focus. The focus will now be on Hammond, Indiana. ” Ganis argued the Bears’ offer to contribute $2 billion to build an Arlington Heights dome was, for taxpayers, “the best by far” of the seven new stadium deals around the NFL. “It did not require any taxpayer money to go into the building, to go into cost overruns, to go into capital improvements or operating expenses,” he said. “No costs to the government for the stadium. “What they asked for was infrastructure and property tax certainty. There are less than five fingers worth of NFL teams that pay any property taxes. The Bears were willing to pay property taxes. But they needed a cap in order to borrow the money they needed to pay for the stadium.” Ganis blamed Johnson and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates for killing a megaprojects bill that the state of Illinois needed, and Pritzker wanted, to compete with other states for large economic development projects. Although her members recently shot down her $8.5 million proposal to raise their union dues, Ganis called Gates “arguably the most powerful figure in the state of Illinois.” This month marks five years since the start of the Bears’ stadium odyssey. On June 17, 2021, the Bears submitted a bid to purchase the Arlington International Racecourse site from Churchill Downs Inc., with then-president/CEO Ted Phillips saying it would allow the team “to further evaluate the property and its potential.” In January 2023, while in escrow, the team chose Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren to replace the retiring Phillips. The team closed on the property the next month, paying $197.2 million. Warren has since, on separate occasions, declared both the lakefront and Arlington Heights as the only sites that make sense for the Bears. The team held a rally for a proposed Museum Campus stadium the day before the 2024 draft that produced quarterback Caleb Williams — and got little statewide support. Johnson said the plan adopted by the Senate late Sunday after a megaprojects bill “that no one liked” was shelved mirrored that 2024 plan, which went nowhere because it needed $2.4 billion in subsidies from Illinois taxpayers. In December, Warren said the team would eye locations in Indiana, which quickly dangled a tantalizing deal at taxpayer expense. Gary and Portage pitched sites — as did Des Moines, Iowa, the most ridiculous turn in a voyage full of them. Mitchell Armentrout and Michael Puente contributed. SHARE COPY LINK Share Patrick Finley Chicago Sun-TimesChicago Bears reporter Fran Spielman Chicago Sun-TimesCity Hall reporter