New Soldier Field stadium plans unveiled

[tBBP]

Either way you gon' be sitting in traffic...even just passing through. (Though I will say that somehow it seems to have gotten a little bit better over the past year or two.)

 

All that said, yeah, getting up to Lake County is even worse...because one has to go either through or around to even get up there. I'm not the biggest fan of operating inside Cook or Chicago...but it's even worse further north. 

[The_Admiral]

The Bears' season ticket base, as best I can tell, is concentrated on the North Shore and the 88/Burlington Northern corridor in southern DuPage: Aurora, Lisle, Naperville, Hinsdale, Downers Grove, etc. A Lake County stadium would put them closer to the former but farther from the latter, while Arlington Heights is inconvenient to both. 

 

MBurny, where, pray tell, in Lake County would you plop a stadium? Tell me so that I can tell you whether the problem would be psychotic infrastructure, intractable NIMBYs, or both.

[TrueYankee26]

5 hours ago, the admiral said:

LOL

 

Honestly only the south and west sides have that rep, downtown and Northside Chicago are safe

[The_Admiral]

Well, downtown has had its problems lately with feral "teens" descending on Michigan Avenue to destroy random stuff but I don't think they'll get away with that one again any time soon. And public transit has gone to hell; you're allowed to smoke any substance you want now on the L and no one's allowed to stop you, basically, but neither of those really have any effect on driving to a parking garage, going to a Bears game, and driving back home.

[Burmy]

6 hours ago, the admiral said:

The Bears' season ticket base, as best I can tell, is concentrated on the North Shore and the 88/Burlington Northern corridor in southern DuPage: Aurora, Lisle, Naperville, Hinsdale, Downers Grove, etc. A Lake County stadium would put them closer to the former but farther from the latter, while Arlington Heights is inconvenient to both. 

 

MBurny, where, pray tell, in Lake County would you plop a stadium? Tell me so that I can tell you whether the problem would be psychotic infrastructure, intractable NIMBYs, or both.

My choices would either be somewhere around Gurnee (close enough to the Mills and Great America) or somewhere within an hour's walking distance of Halas Hall.

[The_Admiral]

Gurnee sucks to drive to and isn't on a railroad, and the North Shore towns would band together to keep the riffraff out.

[Sodboy13]

On 6/2/2023 at 5:23 PM, the admiral said:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/naperville-sun/ct-nvs-naperville-chicago-bears-mayor-wehrli-st-0603-20230602-lukfvexmn5eetmvapyxncgkbxi-story.html

 

 

To get you up to speed, the McCaskeys got caught with their pants down when the Cook County assessor played some dirty politics and nearly sextupled the property tax assessment for Arlington Park, which had the McCaskeys sputtering about how they couldn't afford this, which then raised the question, well, if you can't afford this in-the-grand-scheme-of-things small inconvenience, how can you afford the entire project?, which, obviously, they can't. Now they're playing zero-dimensional chess and trying to negotiate with DuPage County instead. I don't think they end up moving anywhere.

 

Capitol Fax is a state politics blog with some relatively connected commenters, and one pointed out how the Bears immediately stepped on a rake with this. What they should have done was publicly express interest in buying the land "under the right conditions," and working with the state and other necessary entities to do so. Instead, the six-billion-dollar mom-and-pop shop thought they could bigfoot everyone because they're the indispensable Bears, bought the land, and then held out their hands saying "One stadium village, please."

 

Now they're getting clowned by the governor, the state legislature, even the local school districts. As for the county assessor, he's run two successful campaigns on "I'm not a corrupt jag who rolls over for rich property owners at the expense of poor ones like the last guy," so he went ahead and said the property the Bears paid $197 million for was worth, oh, about $197 million. Now the Bears are left to blubber about what the land is actually worth without having much of an explanation of why they'd overpay by $150 million for it, and at the same time trying to explain why they're the sort of smart and savvy business whose wise financial decisions are worth a couple billion in tax breaks and state money. So now they're going to try to charm Naperville's new failson mayor, who definitely does not have ten figures on hand to give, nor the juice to get it. Naperville's got plenty of square mileage, but it's all been turned into lawns and strip malls for the last two decades, so good luck finding land cheap enough to make up for having to sell Arlington at a significant loss.

 

The time to do this all was 25 years ago when nearly no one was wise to the stadium scam and the linemen from the '85 Bears could still actually remember playing in the Super Bowl. Instead, the Bears went cheap, as they have since time immemorial, put themselves at the mercy of the Park District and a city that views the Soldier Field renovation as another massive Daley can-kicking that's still biting them in the collective ass.

 

Other potential municipalities for the Bears to explore:

- Rockford, which a local state rep has already thrown in on. Well, maybe not Rockford proper, too big, too pricey. The Bears can buy the Stellantis property in Belvidere.

- DeKalb, where the Bears can add 40,000 in temporary bleachers to Huskie Stadium while positioning themselves as the secondary tenant in a new facility built for NIU's move up to the Big XII.

- Peotone, just as soon as the airport opens.

[The_Admiral]

Well, fortunately, the Bears are now in the capable hands of...a guy who sold the rights to Big Ten games he didn't actually have the rights to.

[Sodboy13]

Had The Score on as I drove my car to the repair shop (the boys were listening to baseball as I drove yesterday.) I was subjected to five minutes of Mully and Haugh (wait it gets worse) hosting an "expert" on the business of stadiums who immediately started blaming "these corrupt politicians in Cook County and Illinois who can't get out of their own way" and described the Bears getting billions in free money as "this gift they were going to give to the northern suburbs."

 

I detest driving downtown for work, but for a moment I was more than willing to gun it down to Two Prudential with a cast iron skillet in hand.

[raysox]

I have nothing to add here but following along with interest in how this shakes out. But one thing I heard was it's a :censored: to get to Soldier Field via public transport, and after experiencing it for a Fire game in April.... yeah let's get this team out of there. That's not to mention the actual stadium which felt super thrown together.

[The_Admiral]

6 hours ago, raysox said:

I have nothing to add here but following along with interest in how this shakes out. But one thing I heard was it's a to get to Soldier Field via public transport, and after experiencing it for a Fire game in April.... yeah let's get this team out of there. That's not to mention the actual stadium which felt super thrown together.

 

Soldier Field is a bad stadium, yes, but that doesn't justify moving out to the suburbs at the expense of homeowners and school districts. People are going to complain about the ingress and egress of 60,000 spectators no matter where a stadium is, but given the geography of Chicagoland, I think the team needs to be in a central location. 

[Sodboy13]

There is a transit issue that is hard to rectify by virtue of most games being on Sundays, when public transit schedules are always going to be lightest, and most of the Bears' ticket buyers being in the suburbs. Plenty of them want to drive anyway, so they can pay the extra $50 surcharge on top of parking to tailgate in the designated area with their repainted school bus full of gas grills or whatever. As for those who would want to commute, most Metra lines only run hourly or every two hours on Sunday, and their downtown stations are mainly west of the Loop, whereas Soldier Field is well east of it. The Electric Line and the South Shore stop right by Soldier Field, but they serve the South Side, South Suburbs, and Northwest Indiana, aka where the money isn't. Moving to a different location won't solve any of this problem, it will merely change the distance from it.

 

The Arlington Heights location does have a Metra stop right there. Running adequate service and coordinating bus shuttles with it on game days would almost certainly require the Bears paying for the increased service. The Bears paying for anything that does not directly make them money is a non-starter.

[Sec19Row53]

42 minutes ago, Sodboy13 said:

There is a transit issue that is hard to rectify by virtue of most games being on Sundays, when public transit schedules are always going to be lightest, and most of the Bears' ticket buyers being in the suburbs. Plenty of them want to drive anyway, so they can pay the extra $50 surcharge on top of parking to tailgate in the designated area with their repainted school bus full of gas grills or whatever. As for those who would want to commute, most Metra lines only run hourly or every two hours on Sunday, and their downtown stations are mainly west of the Loop, whereas Soldier Field is well east of it. The Electric Line and the South Shore stop right by Soldier Field, but they serve the South Side, South Suburbs, and Northwest Indiana, aka where the money isn't. Moving to a different location won't solve any of this problem, it will merely change the distance from it.

 

The Arlington Heights location does have a Metra stop right there. Running adequate service and coordinating bus shuttles with it on game days would almost certainly require the Bears paying for the increased service. The Bears paying for anything that does not directly make them money is a non-starter.

Is there a reason this isn't adjusted on game day??

[The_Admiral]

22 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Is there a reason this isn't adjusted on game day??

It's a driving crowd. I don't think there's demand. The North Central and Southwest lines don't even have Sunday service. Metra only controls a few lines outright, mostly the southbound ones, and again, not where the money is. The money lines are controlled by Union Pacific or the BNSF.

 

Arlington Park is on the Northwest Line, but it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist: there's not a sizable base of season ticketholders in the city who would take outbound trains to the game, nor is there one in Crystal Lake/Woodstock that would take inbound trains. Everyone in McHenry County seems to own an SUV; they're driving to Arlington Heights alongside the train. Well, hypothetically speaking, because this stadium is never getting built here.

[Sodboy13]

It's also worth remembering that the Bears did not move to Soldier Field until 1970, when pretty much all of the transit rail track currently in use was already built out. Up until then, they played at Wrigley, the 'L' was right there, no worries, and Soldier Field was a desolate 100,000-capacity bleacher cavern whose main draw at the time was the Prep Bowl.

 

Curse the NFL-AFL merger and the subsequent demand on George Halas to put his team in a venue bigger than 35,000, and with lights.

[The_Admiral]

Good letter

 

Quote

I appreciate most of the Sun-Times’ coverage of City Hall and on how Mayor Brandon Johnson might deal with the Bears.

But in the stories I’ve seen about the Bears’ push to go to Arlington Heights, I notice you dutifully recite the team’s complaints about Soldier Field — such as it is the lowest-capacity stadium in the NFL, can’t be redesigned to increase seating nor to give them gambling amenities like the newest multi-billion-dollar NFL stadiums, and was obsolete before it was finished.

 

Soldier Field is the way it is because the city and Park District allowed the Bears to remodel it entirely to their own specifications. That is, the Bears got exactly what they wanted 20 years ago. They, not Mayor Richard Daley, are to blame for the way the stadium looks and operates, and all its foibles, including their design that makes it less useful for soccer and concerts than it ought to be as a civic asset. Giving them free rein to arrogate public property turned out to be a multifaceted disaster.

 

There is no reason to believe the Bears organization could pull off turning 320 acres 30 miles outside the city into a sports entertainment and residential development, given they couldn’t even design their own stadium when they were given the chance and hundreds of millions of dollars in city money.

 

The Bears are a deeply incompetent organization that doesn’t understand its own core business. A team that can’t get its logo right on the field or develop a quarterback cannot be trusted to develop housing and essentially be given control of a municipality.

 

I would be happy to dump them on Arlington Heights, except as a resident of Illinois I might ultimately have to pay for the mistakes of the suburbs.

 

Moreover, various bloviators have moaned that Soldier Field is “difficult to get to.” Soldier Field is right on a Metra line that serves the South Side and suburbs. Could you put some effort into describing the trains and roads that serve Soldier Field, and compare those routes to the existing train line and roads that would have to serve 70,000 fans descending on Arlington Heights? And could you discuss the parts of the metro area that are within 40 minutes of each site and maybe do a graphic overlay of the demographics? That might speak to part of the Bears’ motivation. Or could you estimate the carbon intensity of the projected spectator travel to and from Arlington RaceDome relative to Soldier Field?

 

You might also show us the trend for years has been teams moving back to their cities.

 

Please stop giving the Bears undeserved credibility for their vague, dishonest and environmentally destructive sketch of a recessive plan. Hold them to account.

 

1) This is a very good point. Subway sucks, you made the sandwich. That the Bears play in the smallest stadium is not accidental. The McCaskeys have always wanted to position the Bears as a luxury brand -- among other things, press conference backdrops that alternate the wishbone C with the Cadillac logo will tell you that. You could easily put 80,000 people at a Bears game if you wanted to. They don't want to. They want to keep those seats pricey and valuable for their real or imagined wealthy ticketholders. Somehow dolts in orange Urlacher jerseys get in the door anyway.

 

2) Man, no argument here

 

3) ibid

 

4) This part is how you can tell I didn't write it. No! Go away!

 

5) The author is kind of recalling the Cobb-bound Braves and their "heat map" here about fleeing the black population. Arlington Heights, and the northwest suburbs at large, are interesting in that they're not really that white but they're sure as hell not black. Arl. Hts, Buffalo Grove, Palatine, Schaumburg, they're all about two-thirds white and the other third is a mix of Indian, Asian, and Hispanic that varies from town to town. The black population is negligible. It's not a white separatist's dream, but field level at a Bears game would be the first time there's ever been a hundred black guys in Arlington Heights.

 

That being said, whatever the McCaskeys' motivations are, demographically speaking, that pales ( ) in comparison to the demographic motivations of the people who want to see the team move. A big part of what excites many Bears fans is the thought that moving them out of Chicago punishes and hurts black people there. You can perceive a real feeling that by the Bears moving, Chiraq/Sh-tcago is getting what it deserves for the the gang violence, the homeless population, Lori Lightfoot, you name it. I don't know if that spite really reaches its intended targets, though. Lori Lightfoot just got her failure sinecure at Harvard. What do homeless people care whether the Bears are there? They're homeless! They have bigger problems. You might put some ushers and concession workers out of a job, but they may also take a bus to the new place, because it's not like those jobs are going to fresh-faced Prospect High School seniors like it's a fundraiser. 

 

I'll concede that some aspects of the city have declined since the pandemic. Public transit is a waking nightmare. However, I'll never understand being a Bears fan who goes into a raging froth at the sound of the word "Chicago." If you hate Chicago that much and never want to go there, don't be a Bears fan. Be an Arizona Cardinals fan. They didn't like Chicago either. I don't understand how people on the periphery could want the city to fail, and I want to punish and hurt them.

[Sodboy13]

Quote

A big part of what excites many Bears fans is the thought that moving them out of Chicago punishes and hurts black people there.

 

You hit a bullseye here, and you've no doubt seen and understood that in the fifteen years since Obama got elected, the right-wing provocateurs have done a hell of a job in turning "Chicago" into "the N-word you can say out loud in any crowd, make sure the contempt drips off your lips when you pronounce it." I thought Darren Bailey might cross this line when he kept calling Chicago a "hellhole" from his rented condo in the Hancock building, because he's a very dumb man, but even he just tiptoed up to it .

 

Hell of a letter there. And the CTA's decline over the last three years really bears that Lightfoot hallmark of "How can anybody something up this badly without it being intentional?" Dorval Carter needs to be forced out naked on a platform in February for a Brown Lune train that never arrives.

[The_Admiral]

Yep. "The cruelty is the point," as they say. 

 

I like the Facebook dads who are like "finally, I'll be able to go to a game!" You live in Lindenhurst in a house made of vinyl siding and Chinese newsprint. Forget tickets to the TIFDome, you wouldn't even afford the parking.

[Digby]

In fairness I guess to Chicago, are there any public transit systems in America that haven't fallen off a cliff since COVID?

 

Also are there any NFL markets where people DO regularly take the train in? I guess MetLife has those NJ Transit trains from Penn. I've always got the sense though that the NFL in-person clientele is even more car-dependent than the other Big Three pro leagues.

[WestCoastBias]

19 minutes ago, Digby said:

Also are there any NFL markets where people DO regularly take the train in? I guess MetLife has those NJ Transit trains from Penn. I've always got the sense though that the NFL in-person clientele is even more car-dependent than the other Big Three pro leagues.