Bears Shift Focus on the new position of the Stadium in Arlington Heights; Downtown still at stake

PALM Beach, Fla. – The Chicago Bears have moved the concentration publicly, returning to the Arlington Heights website for their future stadium.

President and CEO Kevin Warren and President George McCaskey turned to journalists on Wednesday morning after the conclusion of the annual meeting of the League at the Breakers. While both maintained the museum campus, where Soldier Field resides, opened as an option for a new stadium, there was a clear change of tone when discussing the Arlington Heights site that the team purchased in 2022.

“Attention is now both Downtown and Arlington Heights,” said Warren. “Now the rhythm will recover and we are lucky to have the option and … in the center from the point of view of the museum campus, there were some discussions on the Michael Reese website, but then also Arlington Heights is, I continue to return, it is an absolutely fantastic piece of land. I thank George and his family for having the foresight.”

Last year at this meeting, then in Orlando, Warren presented the team’s plan focused on a new stadium on the museum campus for the first time. A month later, the bears, together with the mayor Brandon Johnson, made a presentation to Soldier Field with Their plans.

At any occasion in the last year, Warren has never excluded Arlington Heights, but often described the site only in terms of bears that are the major landowners in the suburb.

“At this moment, we are putting our energy in the center of Chicago, on the museum campus, only from the energy point of view and resources”, Warren said last March. “So we still have the earth. We are the greatest land owner. We will remain in communication with Arlington Heights, but now the attention must be on Chicago to give us the best success opportunities.”

Now, after having not been able to obtain the support of the legislative sessions in Springfield and to benefit from the Memorandum of understanding of the board of directors of Arlington Heights Village in December, the bears speak of that site as they did in 2022, before Warren took over as president.

“Being able to find 326 acres that near a wonderful city is difficult to do. I don’t know if it exists anywhere in the country,” Warren said on Wednesday. “I feel really good with the options in the center and then especially with Arlington Heights.”

Warren observed that the site of the Michael Reese hospital is a third option but that it is a limited site. When he talks about Arlington Heights, Warren crossed his benefits.

“One thing about Arlington Heights, I always try to look for the positive elements,” he said. “To have that beautiful piece of land that has a great topography: you can actually see the center from there. To have the Creek Salt that runs through in the middle, it is almost divided equally from the surface point of view. And think of the points of the Meter, it has a position of Arlington Park there.”

He also said that bears have never owned their stadium in their 105 -year -old history, that it would have been another advantage to Arlington Heights.

“Arlington Heights is unique,” said Warren. “I don’t think there is another piece of land like this in the world. Because the biggest thing for me while I represent the interests of the family, I not only look at this generation, but I really say it and I understand it seriously – this is a decision that will have an impact on this franchise for the next 100 years. And my greatest thing that my attention will continue to be the experience of the fans.”

The rendering stadium that the bears presented last April as part of their plan of the museum campus would still work in Arlington Heights, said Warren.

While Warren made this public change in a year to speak brilliantly about Arlington Heights, he says it is always something he thought about during the whole process.

“I dream of all the time and there have been many times that I have guided in the property in order to think only of what could happen,” he said. “You look around the NFL, and also at Tottenham when we were there last year, there were people who lived on the other side of the road. When you start to think of building a fixed -level stadium worldwide, to host Chicago Bears’ games, college football matches, champion things, economic things, our economic values. Astronomical.

The certainty of taxes, anywhere, is an important consideration. In December, the advice of Arlington Heights Village voted unanimously to set bears taxes at $ 3.6 million a year at the Arlington Park site.

“We still have a long way to go. I want to say, I think that the biggest things of Arlington Heights – any place for the stadium – will always be certainty of taxes. It is of fundamental importance,” said Warren. “We are always focused on being great company citizens. We want to pay taxes. We just want to make sure they are rational and reasonable and are not exorbitant and are not raised at some point in the future. So we have a certain certainty in a limited period of time, but we are working and we assure that we can get a long -term certainty.”

Warren reiterated that bears will finance the stadium and all its construction, but they would need public subsidies “from the point of view of infrastructures, and that they are only roads, sewers, highways and transport”.

The goal remains to have a shovel in the ground in 2025, Warren said. And this certainly seems to seem more and more as if it will be in Arlington Heights. A spring legislative session would offer another opportunity for bears plans to Chicago and Warren expects clarity in the coming months.

“Two great places: Downtown and Arlington,” said McCaskey. “Both have their advantages and minors. Both present fantastic opportunities and we will only have to see how it takes place.

“George Halas has identified (Arlington Heights) more than 50 years ago as an ideal place for a bears stage, and I don’t know if something that happened since then has changed that evaluation. As Kevin said, he is ready for the bearing, it was their stop, the topography is good. Here.

(Photo: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)