Hammond mayor optimistic about Bears stadium chances

The mayor of Hammond says he believes this week's inaction by lawmakers in Illinois will help convince the Bears to move to northwest Indiana.

"It was a good weekend for Hammond, I think," Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott, Jr. said on Tuesday's edition of his "Left Of Center" podcast, as he described his view of the Illinois legislature's failure to reach consensus on incentives aimed at encouraging the team to keep playing home games in Cook County.

The veteran Democrat praised what he called the "bipartisan" effort led by Indiana's Republican Gov. Mike Braun to quickly set up a stadium authority to build a new stadium near Wolf Lake that the Bears could rent with an option to buy. He also noted that the eleventh-hour proposal in the Senate that would let big cities in Cook County set up their own stadium authorities with the goal of having a publicly-owned, privately-funded venue was very similar to the Indiana measure.

"Maybe if you guys did that from the beginning Hammond would have never been involved in this, right?" McDermott jabbed. "They can't get it done. They haven't gotten it done, they're not going to get it done."

The Bears have been seeking property tax relief on the Arlington Park property it purchased in 2023 for a potential new stadium. But a House plan that would have allowed "mega-project" developers to negotiate and lock in long-term tax rates with local leaders hit a roadblock in the Senate, and the House didn't even call the Senate's competing proposal for a vote without adjourning the spring session just after 4:30 Monday morning.

In the meantime, one of the sponsors of that stadium authority bill in the Illinois Senate is venting his frustrations about negotiating with the Chicago Bears in the final days of the Legislature's spring session. Chicago state Senate Democrat Bill Cunningham told "Mully and Haugh" on Audacy sister station 104.3 The Score Tuesday morning that the team's mixed messages made it harder for lawmakers to find support for any incentive plan.

"They've been pivoting between various plans back and forth between Arlington Heights and the lakefront, and that shifting continued right up until this spring," said Sen. Cunningham (18th District), describing the team's discussions with the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson as "back-channel." "Those discussions completely undermined their efforts in Springfield."

The Bears front office issued a statement early Monday morning saying the team was sticking to its decision timeline of late spring or summer, and that it was weighing locations in Arlington Heights and Hammond. McDermott said he thinks the team's choice is clear.

"They're making a huge mistake if they don't choose Hammond," he said. "I'm pretty sure that within the next month, Hammond's gonna learn its destiny."