CHICAGO (WGN) — Already amid coaching chaos on offense, the Chicago Bears threw another wrench into the news Tuesday — reconsideration of the Michael Reese Hospital site as a possible location for a new stadium, according to Crain’s Chicago Business.
Per Justin Laurence’s reporting for Crain’s, team leadership is changing their tone on the 49-acre property, which they previously deemed unsuitable for construction of the Bears’ new home.
Laurence wrote the financial structure for a Michael Reese campus is unknown at this time, but the Bears understand they need a larger private investment and may hope constructing a stadium on a long-vacant South Side development could garner them more political support, especially among Chicago politicians at the state capitol.
“It could potentially be a jolt around economic development for the Bronzeville community,” Ald. Lamont Robinson (4th Ward) told WGN News Tuesday. “We need economic development. We need retail. We need affordable housing for working folks.”
The announcement is the latest in a series of topsy-turvy moves the franchise has made in hopes of getting construction of a new stadium off the ground, only for roadblocks to appear and stall development at several junctures.
Team President and CEO Kevin Warren has been adamant about keeping the Bears in Chicago and building a new stadium along the lakefront, but as recently as September, Friends of the Parks announced a coalition to oppose the most recent stadium proposal where they and other allies expressed concerns over the burden it would place on city taxpayers.
“While we would love the Chicago Bears to stay in the city, we object to the site they have selected and the ultimate cost to city residents,” FOTP Executive Director Gin Kilgore said at the time.
Less than two months earlier at a press conference unrelated to the Bears’ stadium proposal, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said it was highly unlikely a deal between state lawmakers and the team on a tax-payer funded stadium would materialize in 2024.
“I’ve done a lot of research on this topic,” Pritzker said at the time. “But let me be clear: There isn’t much change. I made it clear to the Bears’ leadership that it would be near impossible to get anything done.
“If there was a proposal put on the table by then that could get done, you couldn’t actually get it done, probably, during the veto session, and it would have to wait until next spring. In reality, there isn’t a proposal on the table right now that would be acceptable to anyone that I know in the legislature.”
Pritzker’s rebuke of using taxpayer money on a new sports venue came after the Mayor of Aurora and several other politicians tried to publicly court the Bears through an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, where they said, “our city’s vision and professional know-how make Aurora the natural choice for the Bears’ next era.”
Warren said he appreciated the west suburban municipalities proposal, but would be sticking to the plan of building a new stadium along the lakefront, despite a state politician urging the Bears and Chicago White Sox to come together and create a new stadium proposal together.
“We can’t let the conversation die because negotiations were not successful for the first pitch,” State Rep. La Shawn Ford said at the time.
The White Sox proposed building a new stadium and surrounding developments on an undeveloped 62-acre parcel of land in the South Loop knows as “The 78” back in January.
Ahead of the NFL Draft a few months later, the Bears unveiled their proposal to the public where the franchise would put forward about $2 billion of the $4.7 billion need to build the lakefront stadium, according to team projections.
Another $300 million was proposed to come in the form of a loan specifically designated for new stadium developments from the NFL, but to ultimately make the stadium a reality, Warren and the Bears said they would need $900 million in public subsidies from the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding from the state and federal government through three phases of development — $325 million up front, $510 million in phase two and $665 million in phase three.
That’s where the hold-up is when it comes to getting a stadium construction proposal in the City of Chicago off the ground.
The Illinois General Assembly’s November veto session takes place across two weeks on Nov. 12-14 and Nov. 19-21, but as Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch put it back in June, the Bears stadium proposal in its current state would not pass a vote.
“I’m going to say to you publicly what I said to Kevin Warren privately last week: If we were to put this issue on the board for a vote right now, it would fail, and it would fail miserably,” Welch said at the time. “There’s no environment for something like this today.”
Before the Bears pivoted to the Chicago Lakefront, the team made headlines centered around a potential move to Arlington Heights in the northwest suburbs.
The team purchased the Arlington International Racecourse and started demolition on the structure before an impasse on property tax valuation between the Bears and several local school districts grinded the development to a halt.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
