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Bear Digest

Chicago Bears Stadium Drama Deepens as Pritzker, Mayor Clash Over Future Home

The Bears' stadium fight is turning political as J.B. Pritzker and Chicago's mayor clash while Arlington Heights and Indiana remain very real options for 2026.
Gene Chamberlain|
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson continues to deny the reality of the Bears leaving the city, and it's irritating Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson continues to deny the reality of the Bears leaving the city, and it's irritating Gov. J.B. Pritzker. | Patrick Gorski-Imagn Images

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Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered an announcement at NFL owners meetings about where the Bears stadium stands, after he had spoken with Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker.

As announcements go, it wasn’t much. That’s because there is nothing more to the bill providing the Bears with tax certainty and infrastructure to go ahead with the Arlington Heights construction.

It stands where it left off at the end of April, after the bill passed the House. It still awaits Senate approval with a deadline approaching.

"I've spoken to the governor recently and there’s a focus on getting something done, and there will be two viable options for the Bears to choose from,” Goodell said at owners meetings in Orlando.

Thanks commish. Tell us something we don't know.

Actually, there is more now on it but it has nothing to do with building the stadium itself. Although, at least one of the viable options might be less viable.

The clock is ticking toward the end of the month, and end to the legislative session. The Bears don't have passage of the megaproject bill, the plan to get their Arlington Heights stadium going while also allowing for other large construction projects in Illinois through negotiated payments in lieu of taxes.

Exciting political in-fighting

The real excitement isn't new proposals or changes to legislation, What is new is how heated the rhetoric from all sides has become in the Bears' quest for the stadium.

It's gotten so bad that the Bears' stadium is creating a widening political rift between two Democrats, Chicago's Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pritzker.

First, Pritzker opposed the Bears leaving Chicago. As recently as last fall, he expressed belief the team should pay some of the city's remaining debt on Soldier Field reconstruction lingering from 2002, even though the Bears had paid off their own contractual obligation long ago. This was also what Johnson wanted from the Bears, if they chose to leave.

Now, with the possibility of losing the team to a Hammond, Indiana, site labeled by the Tribune Tuesday as a "slag heap," Pritzker has come around to the Bears' way of thinking and supports getting the team what's needed to build this stadium with their own money in Arlington Heights.

All the while, the mayor has denied an obvious reality: The Bears are leaving Soldier Field and Chicago, and will either be in Arlington Heights or Indiana. It now seems Johnson's idea is only to drive the Bears out of state if he is unable to have them for himself.

“I know that the mayor has no plan," Pritzker told reporters on Monday. "He has come up with no plan at all about how the Bears would end up in the city of Chicago. So that’s problematic.

"I’d love them to be in the city but we are three years in now and he still has no plan.”

Actually, it's five years since the team put in its bid on the Arlington Heights property, but who's counting when you're having fun? Give the mayor the first two years because that occurred during the failed Lori Lightfoot administration.

Pritzker suggested Johnson's lack of a realistic alternative within the city to either Arlington Heights or Hammond is his M.O.

“Again, we’ve seen almost nothing out of the mayoral administration here on that subject or really any other," Pritzker said. "So to show up in May and have a bunch of demands seems like late in the game. And it’s unfortunate that’s happened most years."

A heaping helping of slag

The slag heap reference by the Tribune is to the land near Wolf Lake at Hammond, where Indiana has plans for a stadium. It's reportedly an industrial dumpsite covered over during past decades. The Bears have done testing of the land, but no results have been revealed.

If this really is a slag heap, then Arlington Park looks like the only alternative for leaving the city.

If so, look for this entire ordeal to linger in the state government beyond the spring legislative session.

If the state and city have shown nothing else, it is that they know how to waste time with the best of them when there is no real pressure to get something done. Before it was being called a slag heap, the Hammond site at least produced pressure.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.