Arlington Heights is in the best position to carry the ball, mostly because the Bears already have sunk so much money into the northwest suburb.
Chicago probably is a distant second largely because of its history with the team — and of trying to keep them here.
Naperville? The suburb is a wild card at best, more likely to help the Bears land a deal elsewhere than make it to the end zone themselves.
It’s too early to tell whether the team was bluffing earlier this month when it declared Arlington Heights has new competition, introducing Naperville to the stadium derby.
Is it now truly a game of three-card draw? Or were the Bears just angling for an Arlington Heights tax break?
The move leaves an opening for Mayor Brandon Johnson to lay out his cards to keep the Bears in the city. It might also encourage other municipalities to elbow their way in for a hand.
Here’s the early line on where the Bears could end up as the team’s relocation cards keep falling.
The favorite: Arlington Heights
Arlington Heights remains the only suburban play where the team has put its money where its mouth is. The $197 million investment the organization made to buy the shuttered Arlington International Racecourse was a major one for the McCaskey family, whose wealth is tied mostly to their majority stake in a franchise valued at $5.8 billion.
Even while complaining of a high Cook County property tax assessment — and warning that the northwest suburban plan that seemed almost a foregone conclusion weeks ago is now “at risk” — the Bears promised to keep putting money into the project with demolition work in hopes of finding “a path forward in Arlington Heights.” The team asserted that Arlington Heights “is no longer our singular focus” — but didn’t dispel the notion that it’s their sharpest one.
The draw to the former racetrack is clear: 326 acres for a $2.5 billion stadium and more sprawling, money-making developments in the heart of the team’s suburban fandom, all easily accessible by highway and Metra.
Facing pushback from surrounding suburbs and school districts, the team is fighting Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s property assessment that raises their tax bill from $2.8 million to $16.2 million — far beyond the “property tax certainty” the team says it needs.
It’s likely no coincidence that the next potential rival host city named by the Bears — Naperville — straddles DuPage and Will counties, a less-than-subtle threat to take its tax dollars out of Cook County altogether.
That’s why many observers think it’s a ploy to get the assessment lowered for the Arlington Heights project, which remains the only concrete proposal for the team’s future home.
“Every part of this, in some way, is a tactic in a carefully orchestrated negotiation effort,” said University of Chicago economics professor Allen Sanderson, a critic of public financing for sports stadiums. “The team has one goal, and that’s to squeeze out the best deal they possibly can.
“They weren’t just trying to expand their real estate portfolio when they bought Arlington Park,” Sanderson said. “If I were in Las Vegas betting a small amount of my own money on where the Bears will kick off in a few years, I’d bet on Arlington Heights.”
The fallback: Chicago
One of the only certainties is that the Bears will stay on the lakefront for at least the next handful of seasons.
The team’s lease at Soldier Field runs through 2033 — though it can break it earlier at a relatively small price — giving team president and CEO Kevin Warren time to finesse Bears’ landing spot. Even if a new stadium deal were sealed this year, it could take three years or more to build a domed stadium at the massive scale laid out in the team’s preliminary Arlington Heights vision.
But another certainty is that the team is tired of paying the rent at Soldier Field — the NFL’s smallest stadium — and eager to start packing in more fans at a bigger, shinier new home where it could churn out more profits on parking, naming rights and other considerations.
Those concerns wouldn’t be addressed by the $2.2 billion plan that former Mayor Lori Lightfoot floated to put a dome over the aging stadium, not that Johnson has the political appetite to sink more money into it. The city is still paying off more than $600 million from the bonds that funded the oft-ridiculed 2003 renovation.
Johnson has said he wants to keep the team in Chicago. He hasn’t offered specifics on how he’d coax the Bears to stay but struck a vaguely optimistic tone last week after an introductory call with Warren. The pair issued a joint statement in which they cited a shared commitment “that the city and its major civic institutions must grow and evolve together to meet the needs of the future.”
It isn’t clear yet whether that means the team has any interest in breaking ground on the old U.S. Steel South Works site, the former Silver Shovel dump site at Roosevelt Road and Kostner Avenue or another spot the city might propose to the team on the cheap.
The wild card: Naperville
While skeptics dismiss Naperville’s courtship with the Bears as a ploy to gain leverage in lowering the team’s Cook County tax assessment, the west suburb offers some of the same prospects the team has noted in Arlington Heights: easy access to the city and plenty of land to develop.
Still, the growing suburban city hasn’t offered a specific proposal or even a location.
In his letter last month luring team brass to a meeting, Mayor Scott Wehrli hinted at “several available or to-be-available sites that may fit the characteristics you are looking for in your future home.”
Wehrli hardly rolled out the red carpet for the Bears at a Naperville City Council meeting last week when he said, “These conversations are just that: They’re conversations.
“No development proposal was submitted to the city,” Wehril said. “No incentives were discussed, requested or offered by either party in these meetings. No decisions have been made by anyone at City Hall.”
He said there would be “numerous opportunities for community input.”
If that evolves into a concrete proposal, officials in Arlington Heights and Cook County could feel the pressure.
“It would be very dangerous to assume on our end that this is just a negotiating ploy,” said Arlington Heights real estate attorney Ernest Rose.
He’s part of Touchdown Arlington, a coalition of business owners representing what they say is the “silent majority” of residents who want to see the team call their northwest suburb home.
“There’s vacant land all over the Chicago area,” Rose said. “There will be other towns interested as well.”
The field
The team’s latest statement served as an invitation for other suburbs to make pitches to be the Bears’ next host. Team officials called it their “responsibility to listen to other municipalities in Chicagoland about potential locations that can deliver on this transformational opportunity for our fans, our club and the state of Illinois.”
The team has pitted cities against each other during other threats to move away from Soldier Field in the past, most recently in 1995 when ownership floated a plan to build a sports and entertainment complex in Gary.
In the 1980s, the team dangled land-buy options in Hoffman Estates and Aurora and even suggested it could play at Notre Dame while negotiating new deals with the Chicago Park District.
The team could be on the verge of coming full circle from its first threat to leave Soldier Field, which came just four years after they moved there from Wrigley Field.
The Bears’ potential destination in 1975? Arlington Heights.
