It’s a good thing Wednesday’s press conference began with a prayer.
The Chicago Bears will likely need some divine intervention to complete their latest new stadium project.
“We thank you for all the people who will benefit from the Bears’ stay in Chicago,” said the Rev. Charlie E. Dates of the Progressive Baptist Church. “I don’t know if you’ve played football, but I’m asking you to help us, help us win games, help us win a Super Bowl here, help us play a Super Bowl and bring the roar of 1985., encouraging the fans we had, for your glory and for our good.
Let us pray. pic.twitter.com/LWEEcWOHE
— ✶ Ⓜ️𝕒𝕣𝕔𝕦𝕤 ▶️ ✶ (@_MarcusD3_) April 24, 2024
Now, Dates, who surely knows how to run a congregation, admitted he was joking with the part about God playing football. But that begs the question: If the Almighty is a Bears fan, why has he been testing Chicago for so long?
Dates, whose church is located a home run away from Guaranteed Rate Field, kicked off Wednesday’s news conference in which the Bears renderings revealed and lofty promises for a new stadium and friendly lakeside development.
According to the team, the projected cost of the stadium is approximately $3.2 billion, of which the team promises to pay $2 billion, as well as $300 million in loans from the NFL. That would require the public to pay $900 million for the stadium and between $325 million and more than $1 billion for infrastructure improvements. The stadium would be a public-private arrangement and would have a roof.
Bears Project Funding Breakdown:
Stadium alone: $3.2 billion (including $900 million in public money)
Required public infrastructure improvements: $325 million
Optional public infrastructure improvements: $1.175 billionTotal, if team/city pursues all infrastructure upgrades: $4.7 billion ($2.4 billion public; $2.3 billion private) pic.twitter.com/WQRJR13aP7
– Mariah Woelfel (@MariahWoelfel) April 24, 2024
The Bears will need state support for this project, centered on the extension of a hotel tax, preferably before the end of this upcoming legislature.
Gov. JB Pritzker has had reservations about giving money to the team for years, and the time an Illinois governor and House speaker stopped the clock in Springfield to getting money for a stadium is all but a thing of the past. You might also consider the “Friends of the Park” group, which helped scuttle a George Lucas museum on the museum campus. They are also not enthusiastic about this proposal.
.@GovPritzkerresponding to @JeremyGorner» on the Bears’ plan to seek about $2.3 billion in public funding for a new lakefront stadium: “I remain skeptical of this proposal…I’m not sure it’s one of the biggest priorities of taxpayers. » #serge pic.twitter.com/ubrZQnnrvC
-Brenden Moore (@brendenmoore13) April 24, 2024
Who really wants to help Bears taxpayers? It’s been proven time and time again that public money for stadiums is an unnecessary expense, but no matter where they build a new home, the Bears will need help paying for it. Like all sports teams, they prefer to get help from the public. So why not ask? That’s true, but beyond money, many questions remain unanswered, such as: Why build a stadium with a dome in a place where the view is part of the appeal? Will this stadium really only be able to accommodate 65,000 spectators (more or less), when the low capacity is a main argument for leaving Soldier Field?
We may also ask: Why did the Bears choose to hold this press conference, which they must have known would receive negative media coverage, a day before drafting Caleb Williams with the first pick? Why usurp this positive moment? They could have held it in a week or two. What is the emergency?
Bears president George McCaskey hired Kevin Warren as team president to make this deal happen, by hook or by crook. On Wednesday, it was spinning faster than a Williams spiral.
Warren promised that the plan, which involves adding green space where Soldier Field currently stands and building a new stadium just south of it, could improve everything from Chicago’s reputation to as an event city with its crime rate.
According to Warren, Chicago will have a Super Bowl, a Final Four and peace in the streets.
“There will be 14 acres of athletic fields and a recreational park to allow, as I mentioned earlier, our youth to be able to come together and do things productively,” Warren said. “We are experiencing a crisis in this world with our young people. And there is a race to see who will speak first to our young people, to the streets or to us.
GO FURTHER
Bears unveil plans for new stadium near Soldier Field
And if this deal helps Warren’s reputation, makes the McCaskeys richer, and entertains the Grabowskis, even better. To her credit, Warren also made other, er, substantiated promises.
“We will build toilets,” Warren said. “We’ll make this a place where people want to come and spend time.”
(If you’re like me, you read that and imagined James Earl Jones saying, “We’re going to build a toilet, Ray.”)
All of these stadium projects (and Olympic bids) include some sort of public good that could possibly happen without the billions spent on an actual stadium. Warren isn’t talking about building parks in pockets of the city where kids really need them, and it’s not like the museum campus is easily accessible to kids on the West and South sides. But this whole “we’re doing it for the kids” thing sounds better than just admitting, “Give us money for a new stadium.” We all know this is the truth.
White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf is attempting a similar trick just west of Soldier Field. It’s even worse because he doesn’t promise a lot of money to help him, he already did it in the late 1980s and everyone (especially White Sox fans) is already blaming him for the state of dismay of the team.
Like the Sox, the Bears received state help to redo their stadium and that was barely twenty years ago. How did that happen ? We still have an incredible public debt for the spaceship on the lake and the team wants to move. (The fans don’t like it either, but if the Bears were good, they wouldn’t care as much.)
The Bears had been looking for a new home for years and only last year closed on Arlington Park Racetrack in the northwest suburbs. It seemed certain that they would build a new stadium with mixed-use commercial development on the 326 acres. I mean, they actually own the land. They would own the stadium. That would make sense, right?
Not for the Bears, who aren’t exactly known for their managerial success.
Their big plans were halted by a disagreement with suburban school boards over property taxes, and now the Bears, led by Warren, who lives downtown and has befriended Mayor Brandon Johnson, returned to the city and a stadium they would like. I don’t own it entirely.
Some thought it was just posturing. But the village of Arlington Heights and school districts are ready to negotiateand Warren still seems determined to stay in Chicago.
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Years ago, the Bears got into a fight with former mayor (and Bears season ticket holder) Lori Lightfoot, who sarcastically told them to worry about beating the Green Bay Packers. Although the Bears haven’t done this since 2018, even before Lightfoot was elected, they found more success facing Johnson. All they have to do is charm Pritzker and the state legislature.
Good luck.
At the press conference, Johnson predictably mentioned Daniel Burnham, the father of the Chicago Plan and the hero of the city’s protected lakefront. This is the political version of invoking Papa Bear Halas or Mike Ditka.
“Daniel Burnham’s vision for the lakefront was to center it around the people, the people of Chicago,” Johnson said. “He envisioned an active lakefront offering space and entertainment for all to enjoy. The plan revitalizes this vision.
Burnham died in 1912, nine years before the Decatur Staleys moved to Chicago, so we’ll never know what his feelings were on domed stadiums versus “Bear Weather.”
But he would agree that Warren and the Bears aren’t making small plans here. Will these projects come true? I don’t know about you, but until a shovel hits the ground, I’m going to remain skeptical that this Hail Mary will come true.
(Superior rendering of a proposed Bears stadium, courtesy of the Chicago Bears)