Mercifully, the droning headache of a stadium pursuit the Chicago Bears have been on for five years has gone quiet lately. As things stand, it appears to be a standoff between Arlington Heights and Hammond, Indiana. One side already has the property picked out and ready, but no legislation to get the property taxes resolved. The other side has the legislation wrapped up, but lots of issues regarding the preferred property in mind. It feels like whichever one can cross the finish line first will win the prize. For some time, it has felt like politicians inside Chicago have quietly hoped it would be Hammond.
For all their talk about wanting to keep the Bears in the city, it feels like Mayor Brandon Johnson and his supporters are working hard to sabotage every attempt by the Bears to get things going in Arlington Heights. They’ll say it’s because they hope to get a city site back on the table. In reality, it’s a money issue. Chicago knows it stands to lose a lot of revenue from commuter traffic if the Bears build in Arlington. That wouldn’t necessarily be the case in Hammond, which is just over the border from the south side.
Peter Chico, Alderman of the 10th Ward, pretty much confirmed this in recent comments to Paris Schutz.
The Chicago Bears made the right call.
Some people couldn’t understand why the team chose to make the move to a new stadium when they did. This organization has called Chicago home for over 100 years. Breaking up that relationship felt sacrilege. The problem is that the relationship was never really harmonious. There were several periods over the years where it grew contentious. By the end of the 2010s, things had grown frosty. The Park District refused to return their calls, and the city itself dismissed their concerns as not worth the time.
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That is what compelled the Bears to purchase the Arlington Heights property in the first place. Every attempt by the city to seek a compromise since then has felt poorly planned and ham-fisted. Lori Lightfoot proposed putting a dome on Soldier Field, which never would’ve solved the original problem. Johnson tried pushing for a new downtown stadium on the museum campus. That had no prayer because of activist groups blocking it and the unwillingness of the state government to offer any financial support.
Now the city is resorting to dirty tactics.
They know they screwed the pooch, and instead of accepting their failure, they only focus on is trying to stop the cash flow from leaving. That means using their voting bloc to intercept any legislation intended to help the Chicago Bears get situated in Arlington. If it means the team leaves Illinois for the first time in its history, so be it. At least some of the money will stay behind, right? This is another reminder why politicians are the worst. For all their bluster about doing what’s best for the people, what most of them mean is they’ll do whatever fills their pockets.
Maybe now people understand why the Bears got tired of dealing with the political landscape in Chicago. You don’t need to be a detective to know it’s fractured and oftentimes corrupt. Everybody wants their palms greased before any decisions are made. No one should be surprised that Chicago has devoted its efforts to preserve the coin purse rather than putting real energy into a solution to keep the team.
