The changing of the guard in the White Sox owners’ suite — from controlling partner Jerry Reinsdorf to billionaire businessman Justin Ishbia — could be a home run for the team’s stadium quest.
The Sox announced Thursday that Reinsdorf could sell the controlling interest to Ishbia, who already has a minority stake in the team, as early as 2029.
The Sox-chairman-in-waiting has deep ties to both Chicago and Nashville, long floated as a possible relocation site for the team. Ishbia and his brother, Mat, are majority owners of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. Ishbia also has a stake in the Major League Soccer franchise in Nashville.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Sox are headed South or West.
“This is an investment in the future of the Chicago White Sox, and I am excited for the opportunity to deepen my commitment to the city and the team,” Ishbia said through a spokesperson. “I love Chicago, have always loved baseball, and am thrilled to marry two of my passions. I am also very pleased to have my brother Mat and father Jeff joining me in this investment, bringing their collective business and sports acumen to the partnership.”
Ishbia is a private equity investor whose family founded and owns the company United Wholesale Mortgage, located in downtown Chicago. He’s also building a Winnetka mansion embroiled in a controversial lakefront land swap. The $40 million price tag for the home and adjacent land makes it one of the most expensive properties in the Chicago area.
The bottom line is that Ishbia, with a net worth valued at $4.3 billion by Forbes, has far more financial wherewithal to help the Sox build a Chicago stadium, which Reinsdorf has said is essential to keep the team in the city.
In an interview with Crain’s last year, Reinsdorf, now 89, warned that his son Michael would be obligated to do what’s best for Sox investors when he dies, which “likely means putting the team up for sale.”
Reinsdorf said at the time that the way to get the most money for the team would have been to move it to Nashville, where he had already met with the mayor.
“The team will be worth more out of town,” Reinsdorf was quoted as saying.
Ishbia, 47, got his law degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, and is on the board of his law school alma mater. But because his business interests are in Chicago and his home is in the north suburbs, he is far more likely to try first to keep the Sox in Chicago.
Unless Ishbia is willing to remain at Rate Field — the 34-year-old publicly owned stadium at 35th and Shields that Reinsdorf has wanted to jettison — he is likely to consider one of two megasites: the South Loop parcel known as The 78, or the old Michael Reese Hospital site in Bronzeville.
The Chicago Fire have first dibs on The 78 at Roosevelt and Clark, having announced this week that billionaire owner Joe Mansueto has agreed to build a $650 million privately financed soccer-only stadium on 9 acres there.
That doesn’t preclude the Sox from shoehorning their own stadium into that same site. But the South Loop community may be reluctant to welcome two stadiums on a site long promised as Chicago’s 78th neighborhood.
That leaves the Reese site near 31st Street and the lakefront as the most likely Chicago contender in the Sox stadium sweepstakes.
The developers of the Reese site recently tried to lure the Bears with a Hail Mary proposal to build a stadium — with an expansive lawn extending over DuSable Lake Shore Drive. But the Bears have dismissed the site as too narrow and have turned their focus to Arlington Heights.
After striking out with the Bears, Reese developers set their sights on the Sox and the Stars of the National Women’s Soccer League.
State Rep. Kam Buckner, the South Side Democrat whose district includes Bronzeville, urged Ishbia to consider the Reese site, which will remain stuck in neutral until a major anchor can be found.
“It’s a gateway between downtown and communities like mine: Bronzeville and Bridgeport and Chinatown. It would serve as a beautiful backdrop for a baseball stadium. I also think that there’s a real opportunity to create some economic activity in Bronzeville and the surrounding Near South Side in a way that sports teams should be doing,” Buckner said.
Ald. Lamont Robinson (4th), whose ward includes the Reese site, said the 48.6-acre parcel acquired by the city for an Olympic Village that was never built would be a great stadium site. He warned it will sit fallow for years without a catalyst.
“After years of this project not moving, we have to get it developed. If it is the Bears, which is a priority, or if it’s the White Sox, it will allow us to have retail and a 365-day-a-year environment like Navy Pier. We need that on the South Side. We need retail and housing and places for people to go and have a good time in a safe environment with their families,” Robinson said.
Robinson joined Buckner in urging Ishbia to consider the Reese parcel, calling it “a great site in a great community that can lift the boats of the South Side.”
“From the Reese project to the quantum center [at the old U.S. Steel South Works], these would be great bookends for a jolt of economic development on the South Side. It’s a twofer: It’s a great location, but it will also be a huge benefit to the South Side of Chicago,” Robinson said.
Last year, Reinsdorf made a show of going to Springfield to pitch lawmakers on publicly financing a new Sox stadium at The 78. He followed up by inviting legislators to tour a makeshift baseball diamond on the site to give them a taste of what a new stadium would look like with a dramatic view of the Chicago skyline.
Reinsdorf’s plan never got off the ground.
The man who persuaded then-Gov. Jim Thompson to stop the legislative clock and muscle what is now Rate Field through the General Assembly in 1988 to stave off a move to Florida struck out.
Reinsdorf never said how much money Sox ownership was willing to contribute to The 78 proposal.
Ishbia has far deeper pockets that could potentially improve the team’s odds in Springfield.
But Chicago stadium consultant Marc Ganis stressed that a baseball stadium could cost triple the $650 million Mansueto has offered for his soccer stadium. That puts the potential price tag near $2 billion.
“There will be other markets that are growing that are going to want the White Sox, and the economics of baseball are very different today than they used to be,” Ganis said. “It’s going to take some public money to keep the White Sox in town one way or another. The economics of baseball are such that the value of being in a large television market have become far less relevant.”
Even so, Ganis said having a wealthier owner like Ishbia improves the Sox’ chances of finally rounding the bases to a stadium away from the parking lot desert around Rate Field.
Although the complete ownership transition could be years away, Ganis said it “certainly is good to have young, well capitalized … future ownership already decided.”
“There will be a transition that is already known, and the transition is to somebody who already has a business and a home here in Chicago. That’s all to the good,” he said.
As a new face on the Chicago sports ownership scene, Ishbia starts with a clean slate.
He will not be encumbered by the political baggage that Reinsdorf created for himself by threatening to move the team to St. Petersburg, Florida.
When Reinsdorf cracked the door open to moving the team to Nashville last year, lawmakers were not intimidated. They viewed the Sox chairman as the baseball version of the boy who cried wolf.
As the Bears proved yet again by striking out in the spring legislative session in Springfield, the politics of stadium projects has also changed dramatically since 1988, when Thompson worked his magic to replace Comiskey Park.
Lawmakers who used an $800 million package of tax increases to help close a $1 billion budget gap adjourned their spring session without tackling a $771 million deficit looming for Chicago area transit agencies. Stadium financing for any of Chicago’s sports teams was not on the radar.
“Public dollars for a private stadium without public benefit is problematic. We have to shake ourselves loose from that addiction,” Buckner said. “When we’ve had these stadium conversations in the last few years, way too often it’s talking about public funding, but owners have not put enough skin in the game. … To quote the great American poet Snoop Dogg, ‘Everybody’s got their cut, but they ain’t chipped in.’ ”