By now, you’ve heard the news that the Chicago Bears megaprojects bill died in the Illinois Senate. The votes weren’t there. A last-second attempt to introduce a new bill that would allow large municipalities to establish sports authorities to help the team achieve the property tax certainty they wanted did pass the Senate. Unfortunately, the House didn’t vote on it before time ran out. Much of the blame for this goes to the city itself. Reports have said Chicago politicians have gone out of their way to stonewall the bills at every turn.
Some believe this is a desperate attempt by Mayor Brandon Johnson and his voting bloc to keep the Bears downtown. However, the true motivations are far less glamorous. The running belief for the past several months is that the city doesn’t want the Bears to leave until they’ve paid off Soldier Field.
However, that theory always had holes. The Bears paid off their portion of the stadium renovations years ago. The remainder of the bill was the city’s responsibility to pay. It’s been made crystal clear that the Bears feel zero obligation to handle that burden. For the city to remain so insistent never made much sense. There has to be something else going on. Recently, another theory has surfaced online. It implies that the city would rather the Bears go to Indiana because that would mean traveling fans would likely still spend their money downtown rather than in Hammond. Such would not be the case if the Bears built in Arlington Heights.
This angle on the Chicago Bears stadium makes way more sense.
Remember the iconic quote from the movie All The President’s Men: “Follow the money.” The Soldier Field thing didn’t make sense, but the theory’s bedrock did. This wasn’t about people wanting to preserve the legacy of the Bears playing downtown. Politicians didn’t want to lose the vast amounts of money fans would spend in the city. Think about this. Hundreds of thousands of fans live in the north and northwest suburbs. If an Arlington Heights stadium is built, none of those people will have any reason to visit the city anymore. They would all congregate at the Arlington Park site and spend their money there.
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That is potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that Chicago would lose. When that amount of money is at stake, politicians will do just about anything to stop it from happening. A recent study by the Cook County treasurer revealed that even a move to Hammond, Indiana, wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Its close proximity to downtown would mean the Chicago Bears would still provide the city with economic benefits, without them or the state of Illinois having to foot the $1 billion infrastructure bill.
It was always about the money.
Don’t let anybody else fool you. If the Bears were a business that didn’t generate so much revenue, the city would’ve waved goodbye as they left. Losing hundreds of millions of dollars would be a serious economic blow that Chicago doesn’t want to see. Never mind the fact that they could’ve avoided this whole mess in the first place had they mediated between the Bears and the Park District from the start. Now their complacency is coming back to bite them, and in typical fashion, they’re resorting to petty tactics to avoid losing the money.
In the end, it may all be for nothing. Recent indications are that the state government may call a special session this summer to hammer out the sports authority bill. That would enable the Bears to negotiate with Arlington Heights, allowing the township to publicly own the stadium while the team avoids property taxes. Chicago may not have enough sway in Springfield to stop it. Johnson isn’t the most popular person down there. He badly needs the Bears to lose patience and go to Indiana or he’s screwed.
