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.
The Bears said afterward that they still planned to decide between the Arlington Heights and Hammond, Indiana, sites in late spring or early summer. Any decision would come only after the team’s board of directors meets. 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.
Chairman George McCaskey’s last public statement about the stadium issue came two months ago to the day. On April 1, he said the team didn’t have two plans to consider — the team had a legislative framework in place in Hammond but needed to further evaluate the land, while it owned land in Arlington Heights without a framework. The team has an Indiana plan to consider now — but without legislation, it’s unclear if the Bears have a full picture to ponder in Arlington Heights.
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 gonna get what they want here without extracting multiple pounds of flesh.
“It really just show 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 gonna 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,” the source said.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Monday that, as emotionally tied as he was to both the Bears and the state, he wasn’t “willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money in order to give it to a billionaire-owned family, or team.”
George McCaskey said in April that playing in Indiana was something Bears fans would get used to, were that the path the team decided to choose. 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. “When the Bears moved from Wrigley Field to Soldier Field, it required an adjustment. When we went to Champaign, it required an adjustment. And whether we go to Arlington Park or to Hammond, there is going to be an adjustment period. People are going to have to be allowed some time to get used to it. I think Bears fans are up to it.”
After Bears’ push for a mega-projects failed Saturday, the House Bill 958 became a last-ditch effort to give the team the tax break it wanted. It would put have Chicago and Arlington Heights on equal footing when pitching the Bears on a new stadium. In a statement, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson said that “Chicago continues to offer the strongest opportunity to retain the Bears,” touting a “publicly owned site the team has already vetted and approved, an existing sports authority with a dedicated revenue stream, and a framework for moving a deal forward.” The Bears, though, have maintained that Arlington Heights and Hammond, Ind., are their only two options.
Hammond mayor Tom McDermott said that he doesn’t believe the Bears were bluffing about their deadline to pick a site in the next month.
“Right now, there’s only one offer on the table,” he said, “and that offer is from the state of Indiana.”
In a statement Monday, Arlington Heights mayor Jim Tinaglia said that “although we recognize that these discussions are complex and involve many stakeholders, this is 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, who has advised teams on stadium financing issues, argued that the only path forward for the Bears is to finalize a stadium lease as quickly as possible, then announce the move to Hammond.
“There is only one deal on the table,” he said. “So, I think it’s self-evident that the Bears pursue the Indiana option that’s already been legislatively approved.
“[House Speaker] Chris Welch said, ‘We’re gonna talk about it over the summer.’ What are they gonna 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—ing 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 NFL owners who have agreed to contribute heavily to a new Bears stadium, 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 [from the NFL]. Just focus. The focus will now be on Hammond, Indiana. Just as the New York Jets and New York Giants play across state lines in New Jersey…The Jets and Giants play in a stadium built in the New Jersey swamplands…[Environmental concerns] are not an issue.”
Ganis argued that the Bears’ offer to contribute $2 billion to build a domed stadium in Arlington Heights 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 the tag team of Mayor Johnson and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates for killing a mega-projects bill that the state of Illinois needed and Gov. JB Pritzker wanted to compete with other states for large economic development projects.
Although her members recent 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.”
“The state needed a new economic development tool to help attract new businesses, big businesses and to help existing businesses expand and stay in Illinois because Illinois is hemorrhaging businesses, jobs and tax revenue,” he said. “The Bears project was used as the urgency to try and get the mega-projects bill passed. But for reasons that she stated [about the potential loss of education funding] Stacy Davis Gates did not want the mega- projects bill passed.”
This month marks five years since the start of the Bears’ stadium odyssey — one that’s yet to even produce a location. 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 Bears “to further evaluate the property and its potential.”
The team signed a purchase agreement that September. In January 2022, while in escrow on the property, the team chose Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren to replace the retiring Phillips. The team closed on the property the next month.
In the four-plus years since, Warren has, separately, declared both downtown Chicago and suburban Arlington Heights as the only sites that make sense for the Bears. The team even had a rally to drum up support for a Museum Campus stadium the day before the 2004 draft that produced quarterback Caleb Williams. In December, during Packers week, he wrote a letter to fans saying the team would look toward Northwest Indiana for potential locations. Gary and Portage pitched sites — as did Des Moines, Iowa, the most ridiculous turn in a voyage full of them.