Teddy bears may be cuddly, nonetheless sustaining the Bears in Chicago could be toxic for Mayor Brandon Johnson’s formidable agenda.
Final yr, the Bears group launched it was looking at departing its longtime dwelling at Soldier Discipline. The group unveiled lofty plans to assemble a state-of-the-art stadium and sprawling leisure difficult in northwest suburban Arlington Heights, aimed towards rising its functionality and together with worthwhile moneymakers like consuming locations, retail home and sports activities actions betting.
Now Johnson appears to be making a last-ditch effort to take care of the NFL group in Chicago. Don’t do it.
The group has plunked down $197.2 million to purchase the 326-acre Arlington Worldwide Racecourse web site. Demolition of the positioning is underway. Town has authorised zoning changes and totally different initiatives to straightforward the way in which by which.
Lately, info broke that talks to solidify the switch have grow to be slowed down, as a result of the group’s efforts to win state assist and cut back its potential tax burden are flailing. Different suburbs for the time being are flooding the zone with numerous affords. On June 2, Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren met with Naperville Mayor Scott Wehrli to debate transferring the group to Illinois’ fourth largest metropolis, which is 28 miles west of Chicago.
The Bears are working their leverage.
A relocation to Arlington Heights “is not our singular focus,” Scott Hagel, the Bears senior vp of promoting and communications, said in an announcement. “It’s our accountability to hearken to different municipalities in Chicagoland about potential places that may ship on this transformational alternative for our followers, our membership and the State of Illinois.”
It’s a dance, and it may be working.
Final week Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor took a spin, writing to Warren to argue that the Bears belong in her lakefront metropolis.
“Our metropolis’s employees and I invite you and your management group to come back to Waukegan to study in regards to the once-in-a-lifetime alternative our metropolis can supply the Bears,” Taylor wrote in a letter launched to the knowledge media Tuesday.
Search for additional municipalities to waltz in. These avid suitors get free media consideration and a wide-open various to promote their cities.
On June 7, Johnson had a extraordinarily publicized meeting with Warren. They issued a joint assertion that study partially: “At present we met and mentioned our shared values and dedication to the Metropolis of Chicago, the significance of deep roots and the necessity for equitable group funding all through town. We’re each dedicated to the concept that town and its main civic establishments should develop and evolve collectively to satisfy the wants of the longer term. We look ahead to persevering with the dialogue round these shared values.”
There’s nothing in that blah, blah, blah to suggest that Chicago has any hope of sustaining the group.
Johnson offered up a misty-eyed memory of rising as a lot because the tune of the “Tremendous Bowl Shuffle,” the 1985 championship theme monitor. “We need to be sure we will maintain shuffling right here within the metropolis of Chicago with the Bears,” he knowledgeable the knowledge media.
That’s a 38-year-old story.
I get it. Johnson ought to a minimum of appear to entertain “conversations,” as he put it, about sustaining our NFL group inside the metropolis. However the group has made it clear it gained’t maintain at Soldier Discipline. It received’t ever private the Chicago Park District facility and might’t broaden it adequate to reap the earnings it craves.
There was talk about of various metropolis web sites, nonetheless all would suck up tons of of tens of thousands and thousands, if not billions, of funding {{dollars}} to tee up. The Bears would demand a raft of financial gimmes the city can’t afford.
Chicago misplaced the likelihood to assemble a state-of-the-art stadium 20 years previously, nonetheless then-Mayor Richard M. Daley opted for the controversial $632 million refurbishing of Soldier Discipline. Chicago’s venue is the smallest soccer stadium inside the NFL, my good good friend Terry Bannon notes.
Now retired, Bannon is the final phrase Bears aficionado, having coated the group for the Day by day Herald from 1978 to 1989 and reported and edited safety for the Tribune inside the 2000s.
Twenty years previously, “I assumed, you understand, like Daniel Burnham mentioned, ‘Make no little plans,’ however they made somewhat plan as a substitute of an enormous plan,” Bannon said.
Johnson might need the itch to one-up his vanquished predecessor. When the Bears started making an attempt spherical, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was hostile, then made a fantastical present which may have worth billions of {{dollars}}.
Mayor, don’t scratch that itch. You have got a slew of various points worth fixing. A vital play for the Bears would siphon off the goodwill, political capital and onerous cash you need for various priorities, like shoring up the city’s bedeviled pension funds, tackling worth vary shortfalls at Chicago Public Colleges and the CTA, and significantly your bid to fund $800 million in “investments in folks,” i.e., anti-violence purposes, youth jobs, monetary development and psychological properly being care.
The Bears can play their video video games, nonetheless that’s Chicago. No offense to our suburban neighbors, nonetheless we don’t should play with the little kids.
So far as that rising crowd of suitors goes, “I can’t blame (the Bears group) for answering the telephone when any individual else calls,” Bannon said. “However I actually assume that what they’re going to focus on is Arlington Heights, and utilizing no matter leverage they’ve.”
Chicago Bears, skedaddle. Vamoose. Get outta proper right here.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear inside the Tribune each Monday. Write to her at [email protected].
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