It’s been nearly a year since the final horse races at Arlington International Racecourse, but the drama about the facility’s future kicked into high gear in June 2021 when Chicago Bears President and CEO Ted Phillips announced the organization’s bid to buy the 326-acre complex.
The Bears are no stranger to stadium drama, having played charity games at Chicago’s Soldier Field as far back as the team’s first decade, then making it their permanent home heading into the 1971 season after five decades at Wrigley Field. Although the team originally signed only a three-year deal to play on the lakefront, they’ve now logged more seasons at Soldier than Wrigley.
A push to replace Soldier Field with a domed stadium goes back to Lyndon B. Johnson’s second term. That fact came from a Chicago Tribune article written after Mayor Richard M. Daley proposed building a retractable dome over the existing venue, an idea as unlikely in 1996 as it was when current Mayor Lori Lightfoot proposed the same thing this summer.
That 1996 article also notes the Bears playing one exhibition game on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston and rejecting an offer to try the original Comiskey Park, which hosted a year of Chicago Cardinals football before that franchise moved to St. Louis. Arlington Heights has been courting the Bears since at least Walter Payton’s rookie year, 1975, when municipal officials suggested building a 76,000-seat venue for $30 million.
The village’s next formal overture takes a significant step Thursday with a 7 p.m. public meeting at the Hersey High School gym. The event – a team function, not a formal village session – follows Tuesday’s rollout of conceptual images of a “transit-oriented, mixed-use entertainment district anchored by a stadium,” according to a team release.
Bears ownership will spend $197.2 million to buy the site from Churchill Downs (about $21 million shy of the NFL salary cap) when it closes next year and an extra $84 million to break its Soldier Field lease after the 2026 season, instead of waiting for 2033. If those dollar amounts are staggering, remember the early 2000s Soldier Field renovation cost almost $400 million, a project the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority shepherded with a good chunk of public money.
Most valuation estimates say the franchise is worth up to $4 billion, and that’s with what team leaders say is an untenable stadium situation. With Phillips set to retire next year and ownership family matriarch Virginia McCaskey at quite an advanced age, predicting the short-term future is a fool’s game.
Although the Bears vowed they wouldn’t pursue public assistance for stadium construction, there’s no way relocation happens without undertaking the entire project. Taxpayers must remain on high alert.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on Twitter @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
:quality(70)/s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/shawmedia/55aeee77-0609-4323-931a-c6686fff01e6.png)