Everyone Loses from Taxing Bodies' Stadium Project Greed

Analysis: Bears owner Kevin Warren wasn't bluffing about a dome in Chicago and blame for lack of potential tax revenue rests with three school disticts' greed.

Vacated Arlington International Racecourse land could have been a Bears stadium and producing tax revenue but won't now says team president Kevin Warrren. / Stacy Revere/GettyImages

There's a large tract of land, about 326 acres, bordering on Route 53 and not far from Interstate 90 in the Chicago suburbs, soon to be available.

At least it would seem this way.

Thanks to the greed of Community Consolidated School District 15, Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 and Palatine Township High School District 211, with help from Cook County and also the state of Illinois' unwillingness to be involved, the proposed Chicago Bears domed stadium in a place readily accessible to more actual Bears ticket buyers than the lakefront is dead.

Or, at least it is in cryo freeze.

"The plan would be to put a shovel in the ground on the lakefront," Bears president Kevin Warren told reporters at the NFL owners meetings.

This was nothing new, but reiterating a comment made initially when free agency was about to begin March 10 seemed to properly underscore everything.

The team's earlier statement about its commitment to a stadium project in the south parking lot of Soldier Field initially seemed more leverage against the taxing bodies' cash grab.

It's apparently not.

"You have to be laser-focused," Warren told reporters. "And right now, we're putting our energy to downtown Chicago, to the museum campus, just from an energy and resource standpoint."

The Bears really do have to be serious about getting this stadium built in the city because of what they're giving up by putting the Arlington Heights project into the circular file.

Warren came to power at Halas Hall, took a lay of the land, determined the goal posts are continually being moved to difficult places by taxing bodies when everything originally looked fine, and he found a new ally in Mayor Brandon Johnson after former Mayor Lori Lightfoot made it her policy to antagonize Bears ownership.

When the Bears already owned the property and had good support in the immediate community of Arlington Heights, it all should have been so easy.

The project in the city takes facility ownership out of the McCaskey family's hands. It becomes a public-private project and makes it less profitable. It makes it more costly to the public in generral. There's no way around this.

The Bears will not realize their potential value playing in a domed stadium on the lake the way they could by owning their own property in the suburbs, of this there is no doubt.

They can still come out of it fine because they'll be in a partnership, somewhat like the deal Jerry Jones has in Dallas. Jones' team was said by Forbes to be worth $9 billion, highest of any NFL and sports team. So the model obviously can be beneficial.

The Bears were at $6.3 million with their current low-cost lease at Soldier Field, where their revenues are limited. So the stadium with an ownership stake won't hurt pushing their value up higher then fifth on the Forbes list, where they were on the ranking for NFL teams released by Forbes in August of 2023.

But it's not perfect. The need for an indoor stadium for Chicagoland and also the Bears is obvious, because of the extra revenue it produces that an outdoor stadium owned only by the Bears or the city can't.

The infrastructure on the lakefrornt and the ease of building it is not there like it would be in the suburbs.

Anyone who tried to get to Soldier Field by public transportation or car from the suburbs can tell you this much. It's not like getting on the red line and going to Wrigley Field or a White Sox game. It's not like hopping off the Dan ryan and going to a White Sox game or the Eisenhower and going to United Center.

They already have a lack of parking at Soldier Field with the only interstate feeding directly to the stadium area coming in from the south.

They'll need to correct this and it will cost tax payers.

But the Bears will get by with their future prosperity assured from a plan that they expect to announce in more detail within a month.

In the meantime, the northwest suburbs will have to eventually put up with a new owner for the Arlington Heights land after the Bears sell it. They'll not get the tax revenue the stadium and surrounding commercial development would have provided.

It didn't need to be this way, but now they'll have to live with it because Kevin Warren wasn't bluffing.

Three taxing bodies fumbled the ball with the path to the end zone wide open, and it cost everyone the best possible outcome.

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