(670 The Score) While the Bears have momentum toward purchasing land to build a new stadium on the 326-acre Arlington Park property in northwest suburban Arlington Heights, chairman George McCaskey on Monday emphasized the team remains in an exploratory stage of the process.
In late September, the Bears signed a purchase and sale agreement with Churchill Downs Incorporated to acquire Arlington Park, which had long been the home of horse racing. That was a step that showcased the Bears’ seriousness of leaving Soldier Field in the city to build their own state-of-the-art stadium, but McCaskey cautioned it doesn’t mean anything is finalized.
“Right now, all we’re doing is exploring the property’s potential,” McCaskey said at a news conference Monday afternoon to address the team’s future after firing general manager Ryan Pace and coach Matt Nagy earlier in the morning. “We don’t even own the property yet. Any questions beyond that would be premature at this point.”
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McCaskey also made a comparison to help showcase where the Bears are in their process.
“The best way to explain it is anybody who has bought a house or a lot to build a house, there’s a time between when the property is under contract and closing,” McCaskey said. “And during that time, there are things that need to done in terms of due diligence – making sure that there is a clear title to the house or lot. If it’s a lot, determining whether it’s a build-able lot and so forth. A lot of regulations that need to be checked out. Well, on a property of this size, that time between contract and closing is vastly expanded. There’s a lot of due diligence that needs to be performed before we can before we can close.”
McCaskey was mum on a timeline, but president Ted Phillips shed more light on that topic. Phillips is leading the project.
“The closing on the land is probably going to take the rest of this year, maybe into the first quarter of 2023,” Phillips said. “At that point in time, we’ll decide whether it’s financially feasible to try to develop it further.”
Phillips also expressed optimism.
“We're hopeful that if we close, we'll be moving forward with turning it into a wonderful destination site,” Phillips said. “The timing of it, we don't know because we haven't even closed on the land ... We're excited. It can be an entertainment destination with multiple facets to it."
The Bears are under contract to lease Soldier Field from the Chicago Park District through 2033, but it’s an agreement that could be broken with a penalty. The Bears’ penalty for breaking the lease would start at $84 million in 2026, the Chicago Tribune has reported. That year -- 2026 -- is widely considered the first year in which a new stadium could ready for the Bears when factoring in the process of acquiring the site and then designing and building the facility.