The Chicago Bears stadium saga has reached a crescendo. Sadly, the result isn’t what anybody wanted. According to State Senator Bill Cunningham, the megaprojects bill that would officially give the team the tax certainty and infrastructure support they need to begin building in Arlington Heights won’t move forward. There aren’t enough votes in the Senate to pass it before the legislature adjourns from its spring session on May 31st. Most felt that if this happened, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the Bears would move to Hammond, Indiana.
Cunningham stated that the government is attempting to introduce new legislation focused solely on giving the Bears the tax certainty and infrastructure support they want without involving the rest of the state. That was one of the primary sources of opposition. There is also uncertainty about how such a bill would impact local tax revenue. To help prevent the Bears from immediately jumping to Indiana, several lawmakers are pushing for a realistic way to keep the team in Chicago.
This feels like a Hail Mary by Illinois to keep the Chicago Bears.
State Sen. Bill Cunningham stepped out of a two-hour private Democratic caucus meeting and delivered a bombshell Saturday night: A PILOT bill aimed at keeping the Bears in Illinois is off the table and the city of Chicago is back in the mix.
Cunningham, a top negotiator on legislation aimed at giving the Chicago Bears tax certainty so they could move to suburban Arlington Heights, acknowledged the proposal “does not have the support to pass” the Illinois Senate. Chicago-based lawmakers want to “put the city on an equal plane” to “compete” for a stadium project.
“I would say that the PILOT megaproject structure is one we’re having difficulty with and we’re trying to figure out if there’s another way to make sure the Bears build a stadium in Illinois without using that model,” Cunningham said.
He also pushed back on the accepted narrative that the Bears had ruled out the city and had little dialogue with its officials — statements the Bears themselves have made within the last few weeks.
“I would point out, though, that it’s been established that the Bears have met repeatedly with the City of Chicago over the last several months to talk about this,” he said in response to a reporter’s question about a Chicago stadium being off the table. “So although they publicly said that, there have been talks between the City and the Bears.”
It feels like the state government is trying to appease Kevin Warren.
Chicago’s team president was the one who stated from the outset that his goal was to build a new downtown stadium. The image of that skyline on the lakefront is priceless. He and Mayor Brandon Johnson put together a proposal and everything. It never went anywhere. The state government was unwilling to even contemplate the idea. It was very expensive and faced immediate resistance from activist groups. Everything the team has said and done publicly since then suggested that Chicago was off the table permanently.
However, based on what Senator Cunningham says, the team never fully gave up on the idea of staying downtown. It would be the perfect solution. Of course, that begs the question. What could possibly have changed in the past few years that suddenly makes such an option viable? One is the looming threat of Indiana. That wasn’t a concern during the first attempt. The only other possibility is that there is another potential site in the city that the Chicago Bears might be warming to, which the state would be willing to help with.
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One thing will become clear in the next week.
If the franchise doesn’t announce its decision to begin moving to Indiana in the wake of the megaprojects bill failing, it will start to look like all of this was nothing more than an elaborate bluff. They never had any intention of leaving Illinois and were using every tactic possible to get the public support they wanted. If they do announce it, then it will be a landmark moment in NFL history. The Bears have called Illinois home for over a century. Leaving for Indiana will bring that to an end.
It is hard to imagine either the government or anybody else can work out a downtown solution in such a short span of time that would be truly viable. The realistic hope is that they can pass legislation that gives the Bears the tax and infrastructure support they need. Yet even that is hard to see happening. There are too many factions involved in this process that are at odds with each other. It feels like the state is asking for more time despite repeated warnings that the Bears have run out of patience.
