Monsters of the Midway? Not lately. At least, not on the field after a 3-14 season that bestowed upon Chicago’s beloved Bears the ignominious distinction of being the worst the NFL has to offer.
Off the field, however, they’re showing aggressiveness reminiscent of their yesteryear glory days.
The Bears’ bid to build a stadium-anchored megadevelopment in northwest suburban Arlington Heights recently got jolted by Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi’s decision to assess the former Arlington International Racecourse site – now property of the Bears – at $197 million, roughly the price the team paid to buy the land from Churchill Downs and a far cry from the property’s 2021 assessment of $33 million.
If Kaegi’s assessment stands, the Bears would be walloped by massive property tax bills. In Cook County, homeowners and businesses are accustomed to getting waylaid by hefty property tax increases year after year, so Bears leadership shouldn’t be surprised at all by the future hit to team coffers.
The Bears nevertheless had an answer to the new assessment. Play hardball. The team suddenly suggested they were no longer singularly focused on Arlington Heights and instead were open to the idea of building a new stadium in far western Naperville, a DuPage County suburb and Illinois’ fourth-largest municipality. Now, Waukegan is interested.
Last week, Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren also sat down with Chicago’s new mayor, Brandon Johnson, who has said he’d like to find a way to keep the team from leaving the city. What if anything that meeting yielded isn’t known; the pair issued a joint statement afterward that spoke vaguely about “our shared values and commitment to the City of Chicago, the importance of deep roots, and the need for equitable community investment.” Boilerplate verbiage, at best.
We don’t fault the Bears at all for exercising due diligence in exploring other potential venues, or even using Naperville as leverage in negotiations over the Arlington Heights site. Like any property owner, they’re within their right to build wherever they want, or scrap Plan A in favor of Plan B, if they wish.
But by now, they should have absorbed the message sounded by us and others ever since they raised the prospect of leaving Soldier Field in 2021. Taxpayers, whether they’re in Arlington Heights, Chicago, Naperville or anywhere else in Illinois, shouldn’t have to subsidize a multibillion-dollar NFL team’s bid to move from one municipality to another.
In the event the Bears need reminding, the team is a $4 billion business, according to Forbes magazine, with the wherewithal to build a stadium/megadevelopment on their own, without taxpayer help. There are too many examples of NFL teams that have leaned on taxpayers for truckloads of cash for stadium projects, only to see predicted boons to local economies never materialize.
Chicagoans know all too well how the Bears turn to intimidation to get their way with pliant politicians. During Mayor Richard M. Daley’s reign, the team torqued the screws hard on City Hall to renovate Soldier Field.
The result was a saucer-shaped monstrosity that permanently marred a memorial to World War I U.S. soldiers, and heaped $432 million in public debt on the backs of taxpayers. When the deal was first inked, Daley pledged that taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay a dime. To this day, taxpayers are paying off Soldier Field renovation debt.
Where the Bears end up is anyone’s guess. We’re glad Warren and Johnson have had an initial sit-down, though Johnson should heed the lesson in how Daley blindsided taxpayers with an unconscionably costly capitulation to the Bears’ demands. Perhaps Bears talk of Naperville is a smoke screen; perhaps not.
In any case, as this drama unfolds and towns come and go as potential venues, the Bears should remember this: The team can always rely on Illinoisans as a fan base, but not a bank account.
Chicago Tribune