Even if the Bears were forced to pay off the $525M in outstanding public debt from the “controversial 2003 Soldier Field renovation,” that alone is “unlikely to be enough to satisfy city lawmakers who are key in providing the necessary votes to advance any legislation to help the team” build a new stadium, according to a front-page piece by Pearson, Gorner & Olander of the CHICAGO TRIBUNE. The Bears’ “playbook” for constructing a new domed stadium in Arlington Heights “calls for state lawmakers to act in October to approve property tax break legislation that would allow them to break ground this year.” However, the Bears’ hole “may have grown deeper,” with legislators from the city “potentially seeking additional funding from the team, ranging from help to maintain the Soldier Field lakefront campus to programming funds for the city’s public schools to even assistance related to funding for a public transit system that’s facing a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars.” The fall veto session, which runs Oct. 14-30, leaves “little time to build consensus in Springfield.” And the Bears have so far “had few discussions with state lawmakers to lay the groundwork for getting the legislation they need passed during that two-week sprint” (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 8/18).
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKING: Bears President & CEO Kevin Warren talked about the effort around getting a new stadium built during the national Fox broadcast of last night’s preseason game against the Bills. Warren said, “We have a great site in Arlington Heights, 326 acres of land -- a beautiful piece of land. Now we just need to bring it to reality. This is a jobs opportunity. You’re talking about 56,000 construction jobs, over 9,000 permanent jobs. The good thing is it’s in Cook County, it’s where Chicago is. It’ll add a lot of panache here. We’ve never hosted a Super Bowl here, we’ve never hosted a Final Four here. … It’s coming along well. Hopefully we can get it approved in the fall veto session.” Despite Chicago and Arlington Heights being around an hour apart from each other, Warren said, “One good thing about it is that Chicago, and also Arlington Heights, is in Cook County. We’re in the same county. So it’s important for us to work this out. But it looks like it will afford us an opportunity for everyone across this great state of Illinois that we live in to be able to benefit from it.” More Warren: “Our whole goal in designing the stadium is that if you walked a Chicago Bears fan into our new stadium and blindfolded him and took the blindfold off, when they would look around, they’d be able to tell you that they’re in Chicago” (“Bills-Bears,” Fox, 8/17).
WHAT ABOUT SOLDIER FIELD? In Chicago, Fran Spielman wrote with the Bears appearing determined to move to Arlington Heights, it raises the question of “what should become of Soldier Field” if they leave Chicago. Last year, Soldier Field generated $54M in revenue for the Chicago Park District, $7M of it “from rent paid by the Bears.” This year’s take is “expected to rise” to $57M. Former Park District Superintendent David Doig argued that the stadium can be “turned into an even bigger moneymaker without the Bears.” Doig said, “You could host Big Ten college football games every week. You could have lacrosse there. You could have rugby. ... You could do cricket matches at Soldier Field.” Doig: “There’s ways to rework the parking and maybe have some smaller venues, create more of a festival grounds and move Lollapalooza down there.” However, sports consultant Marc Ganis said that if the Bears move to Arlington Heights, the Park District “would be well advised to ‘move away from sports.’” With the new Ryan Field in Evanston and new Fire stadium proposed for the 78, Ganis said that the Chicago area will be “saturated with sports venues to a point that Soldier Field would no longer ‘serve a sports interest’” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, 8/15).
