Kevin Warren conveys to national audience that Arlington Heights stadium plan is decided
The Chicago Bears' likely move to suburban Arlington Heights is being amplified to a national audience.
At the Bears' preseason game against the Buffalo Bills Sunday evening, Bears president and chief executive officer Kevin Warren stopped mentioning Chicago as an option at all.
While Mayor Brandon Johnson has tried to fight to keep the Bears in Chicago, team brass is meeting every week with leaders in Arlington Heights.
On Sunday night, Warren signaled to a national audience that Arlington Heights was the only location now being considered for a new stadium. Color commentator Greg Olsen of Fox Sports asked Warren, "How important is it to you guys at the organization to keep the future home of the Bears in Chicago?"
Warren replied, "Yeah, one good thing about it is — Chicago, and also Arlington Heights, is in Cook County. We are in the same county. So it's important for us to work this out."
To that national audience, this was the loudest signal yet that the Bears' time within the Chicago city limits almost certainly nearing an end.
"Kevin's being forthright, saying that Arlington Heights is it for the new stadium," said Marc Ganis, president of Sports Corps Ltd. "The reason for that should be obvious to everyone — there is no other plan that has been put on the table."
Ganis has worked on two dozen sports major league sports facility projects. He said the Bears are no longer weighing the option of staying in Chicago versus going to Arlington Heights, and leverage games are over.
Chicago, Gains said, is out of it.
"If the mayor had any cards to play, he should've played them already," said Ganis. "He has no cards to play. He has failed utterly in getting any traction of any kind."
All eyes are now on the fall veto session for the Illinois General Assembly to see if the Bears can hammer out a deal with the State of Illinois that moves the stadium plan from the theoretical to the real. But it all feels very real in the northwest suburbs lately.
"I believe in my heart of hearts that yes, everything is focused toward Arlington Heights, and the proof is that they're working with us weekly," said Arlington Mayor Jim Tinaglia.
Mayor Tinaglia said the frequency of visits and combing through details is the biggest signal.
"If I were a betting man, and I'm not, I'd be betting that they are coming," he said.
From The Bears to the Illinois State Capitol, negotiations that could move the stadium plan to a conclusion are two months away.
"It's on us to convince the governor and the state legislators that this is a good idea," said Bears chairman George McCaskey.
But some legislators, even with Chicago, roots are reticent.
"Any company that has that type of economic heft, and they're moving into a new locale, they should be chipping in, right?" Illinois state Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) said last week.
Warren's mention of Cook County when asked about the plans during the Bears game was not an accident. The county gets 6% of ticket sales, which may help those analyzing the dollars and cents of all this.
The Bears made a bid to buy the old 326-acre Arlington International Racecourse in 2021.
While they closed that $197 million deal in 2023, and later demolished the racetrack's grandstand and other buildings, plans to build a stadium there were delayed amid a dispute over property taxes.
The Bears later pivoted to plans for a domed stadium on the Chicago lakefront, unveiling a $4.7 billion proposal that would have relied on $2.4 billion in public funding. Gov. Pritzker called that plan a "nonstarter," and said public funding for a Bears stadium would not be a good deal for taxpayers.
The Bears' focus has since returned to Arlington Heights. But that was after they spent over a year and a half trying to figure out a way to stay in Chicago.
Ganis said that stance delayed the project — costing hundreds of millions in lost revenue in a new stadium. As time has passed, the cost of everything — inflation — has skyrocketed.
