People have tried to argue for months that the Chicago Bears’ flirtation with a new lakefront stadium south of Soldier Field was nothing more than a bluff. It was a careful negotiating tactic by team president Kevin Warren to get Arlington Heights to lower its demands for high property taxes. However, alarm bells have gone off repeatedly in recent weeks, suggesting this is anything but a tactic. Warren and the Bears are dead serious about this. They feel a lakefront domed complex has serious legs among top Chicago decision-makers.
Once Mayor Bradon Johnson showed interest in working something out, momentum began building. The Chicago White Sox, also looking for a new stadium, reached out to make it a joint venture that could help streamline the process. Warren appears so confident in his chances of making this happen that he just took a critical step toward the point of no return. According to Josh Schrock of NBC Sports Chicago, the Bears president met with the people most necessary to help bankroll the stadium push.
If you didn’t think they were serious before, you should now.
Bears president Kevin Warren and executive vice president of stadium development and chief operating officer Karen Murphy met with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority Tuesday, a source confirmed to NBC Sports Chicago. The ISFA is a state agency that will be key to bankrolling Warren’s vision for a new domed stadium on the lakefront.
The meeting was described as “preliminary,” but the Bears did show the ISFA renderings for their lakefront stadium plan…
…The ISFA issued bonds to help finance the 2003 renovation of Soldier Field. A two-percentage-point increase in the hotel tax backed those bonds. The bonds will be retired in 2032 but have balloon payments that cause the payments to go from $56.7 million this year to $90.5 million in 2032.
Warren was pressed for a firm timeline on a stadium decision and said he’d like to have something concrete by year’s end.
The Chicago Bears wouldn’t be this aggressive if the chances weren’t high.
That is the reality people aren’t confronting. Yes, there is opposition. Local advocacy groups like Friends Of The Parks are trying to dissuade the people in power from doing this. They don’t want any new development on public lands, which they’ve sworn to protect. A new stadium complex would drastically alter the lakefront, taking much of it away from use by the locals. It is why they worked hard to shoot down the George Lucas museum that tried to build there a few years ago.
Unfortunately for them, the Chicago Bears have way more political sway. Not to mention, their team president isn’t new to this game. Warren was instrumental in helping the Minnesota Vikings build U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis. He isn’t one to fear the challenge of doing the same in Chicago. It always comes down to money. His job at the moment is to find out how much funds he can squeeze out of the taxpayers. That is where the meeting with the ISFA comes in.
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