People have been confused for months about why the Chicago Bears’ stadium plans have taken so long to get off the ground. The organization purchased the Churchill Downs property years ago. They have all the necessary paperwork. Part of the issue was that they deviated from the original plan because they wanted to try building a state-of-the-art complex downtown. However, it became obvious Governor J.B. Pritzker would not offer any public assistance for that. So team president Kevin Warren pivoted back to Arlington Heights.
Problem solved, right?
Nope. The past couple of weeks, it feels like the Bears have put on a full-court press in the media to get the stadium off the ground. Illinois’ legislature will reconvene in October to vote on legislation. One bill on the table is what the Bears need passed to clear the way to begin construction. Rick Pearson of the Chicago Tribune has reported that things are much worse than that. Corruption has always been a core issue in Illinois politics for decades. It appears various politicians are now trying to gouge the franchise for money to get the votes they need for the bill to pass.
It’s stuff right out of a Hollywood movie.
Already, there is $525 million in outstanding public debt from the controversial 2003 Soldier Field renovation, a tab currently covered by city hotel taxes and, when that falls short, by Chicago’s share of state income taxes. The Bears’ lease at Soldier Field expires in 2033, but it can be broken early with a penalty, and the team says it will take three years to build its new stadium.
But even if the Bears were forced to pay off the outstanding debt, 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.
Instead, 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.
And if votes of downstate lawmakers, largely Republicans, are needed in the Democratic-led legislature, they are likely to make their own demands that the team help fund some of their local initiatives.
The Chicago Bears clearly went into this without a plan.
They likely assumed the process would be relatively straightforward, which was beyond naive. The McCaskey family has always shown that they never fully grasped the quagmire politics can be. If you’re not willing to grease the wheels, don’t expect the vehicle to move forward. If it sounds dirty and underhanded to hold a stadium hostage for more money, that’s because it is. This is the same problem George Halas ran into for years when he owned the Chicago Bears. He never had the money to meet every demand for a new stadium nor the political savvy to navigate the waters. Having Warren in charge was supposed to help this time, given his experience getting U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis built. He clearly wasn’t prepared for the cesspool he stepped into in Springfield.
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