Hold Onto Your Wallets

Without officially turning their backs on Arlington Heights, the Bears announced today their interest in building a domed stadium in the parking lot south of Soldier Field, along with a willingness to contribute $2 billion in private funding. If you’ll pardon the pun, that’s rich. This is an organization fighting tooth and nail to lower the tax assessment on the property it bought in the northwest suburbs; the McCaskeys couldn’t care less about the optics of trying to force school districts into taking less funding. We’re a founding franchise, dammit! And all this talk about the fan experience. The Bears were going to build their own entertainment district on their own property; they can’t do that on public parkland. It’s not even sure they can build a new stadium there. Oh, excuse me. A public body will build it for them, so that makes it all OK. But none of this means the fans have been forgotten, so sirree. How much of that $2 billion will be coming from issuing new personal seat licenses? I’d go so far as to say the team would increased seating capacity just to get more PSL revenue, but I am skeptical by nature. I’d also be careful about any kind of public-private “partnership” offered. The Bears are going to want control of concessions/parking while offering to pay a minimal rent. These guys don’t want to fund schools. You think they’re going to pay their fair share all of a sudden? Of course, the team could go about 1-1/2 miles south on the lakefront to the old Michael Reese hospital site, with 48 acres just waiting to be developed. Yet not a peep about this site. I wonder why. For that matter, if it’s going to be a domed stadium, why does it have to be on the lakefront at all?