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Courney Cronin
Palm Beach, Florida – The Chicago Bears plans to build a new stadium took a change of tone on Wednesday during the annual NFL meeting.
A little more than a year after the team declared its objective of building a stadium south of the current Soldier Field site on the lake at the lake in Chicago, the president and chief executive officer of the Kevin Warren team said that the Bears extended their options to include Arlington Heights, Illinois, where the franchise currently owns 326 acres that sheltered The Arlington International International Racecourse.
“The accent is now both downtown and Arlington Heights,” said Warren. “These are not linear processes or projects. They take time, they take a lot of energy and effort. I am very, very satisfied with where we are. I think we, collectively in groups, we are where we thought we were.”
The Bears bought the land from Arlington Heights for $ 197.2 million in September 2021, but did not start developing the site, which was to include a stadium project of several billion dollars and include restaurants, retail spaces and real estate. The team began to explore the options of a new stadium beyond Arlington Heights in the summer of 2023 when they announced that these plans were “at risk”, because land tax negotiations reached a dead end of $ 100 million.
One day before the draft of the NFL 2024, the Bears unveiled plans for a dome -shaped stadium on the Campus of the Chicago Museum. Although the team argued that the construction of a new stadium will be funded by private, the concerns concerning the burden imposed on taxpayers to finance the infrastructure around the stadium led to a dead end.
In December, the Board of Directors of Arlington Heights unanimously approved a tax settling with three school districts, which paid the annual property tax bill for the potential site of the Bears stadium at 3.6 million dollars. While Warren noted the “progress” made with Arlington Heights, he also noted that there was more work to do.
“Because these projects are so complex and so difficult, they are literally practically impossible to do if you do not have all hands on the bridge and everyone has engaged,” said Warren. “Even if you have that, they are difficult. It was therefore important to see the accent.”
Warren reiterated that the team’s objective was to start building a new stadium in 2025. The president of the Bears, George McCaskey, said that investment capital ”could be used as part of our stadium construction finance plan”, but that the team has not yet made a decision on this front.
“Yes, my goal remains still, to be able to move dirt in 2025, which is important because there is a lot of pre-construction work that must enter these projects, whether you are on the museum campus, Michael Reese (hospital site) or the city center, to prepare things to go, and therefore we are only on the quarter of the year,” said Warren.
Also on Wednesday, speaking publicly for the first time since the death of her mother, Virginia Halas McCaskey, an emotional George McCaskey addressed the state of the team, which has been part of his family for 105 years.
“We have said for many years that we intend to own the Bears as long as possible,” said George McCaskey. “Another 100 years would be great. She set up for us to do this. She gave us the game book. She has trained us. Now we have to execute the plan, and we are ready to do it. We have to stay together.”
McCaskey said the Bears succession plan had been approved by the NFL and that it does not provide any change in property structure.
“(Virginia McCaskey) set it up for a smooth transition, and it’s a credit for him,” said George McCaskey. “At the school of law, I heard stories about people who could simply not contemplate their mortality, and consequently, it caused a lot of confusion and problems to the family, and she had the foresight to install it so that we do not have this problem.”
