Chicago sports fans are by now used to "heart attack" plays from their favorite sports teams. The Bears came from behind to win seven games in head coach Ben Johnson's inaugural season last year, and the Cubs have notched three walk-off wins just this week.
But the gambit Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson brought to Springfield this past week against the Bears' planned move out of Soldier Field less than a month before the end of the spring legislative session could have politicians and sports fans looking for the nearest AED.
The Mayor lobbied the city's legislative delegation against the measure that passed the House last month giving the Bears and other "mega-project" developers the ability to negotiate long-term property tax payments with local authorities. Team executives say being able to set those payments in advance would make it economically feasible to build a new domed stadium on the site of the Arlington Park horse-racing track in Arlington Heights.
But the bill now getting a look in the Senate also contains a host of other initiatives designed to win support in the lower chamber, including incentives to redevelop rail yards and a requirement that 50% of those advance tax payments get funneled into providing property tax relief. Gov. J.B. Pritzker told reporters last month that he knew the Bears were not on board with one provision for a 9% amusement tax in the area around the future stadium: "That's something they didn't expect, don't believe it's a good thing for Bears fans or for the Bears stadium."
"The governor doesn't like the bill," the Mayor told reporters in Springfield Wednesday. "The Bears don't like the bill. So we have a bill ... that no one likes ... that would give, potentially, property tax relief to a major corporation!"
Mayor Johnson appears to see the broad dissatisfaction with the "mega-projects" bill as an eleventh-hour opening to resurrect the proposal he and Bears CEO Kevin Warren made two years ago to remake the city's Museum Campus around a publicly-owned domed stadium. The Mayor's pitch to lawmakers included the suggestion that the governor's general promise of help with infrastructure around a new Arlington Heights stadium would create more public benefit if it's used to make over the area along Chicago's lakefront.
"There are economic advantages for the entire state of Illinois with unlocking the full potential of the top tourist destination in the state of Illinois, the Museum Campus," he said. That makeover would include creating better ways to get in and out of the area which includes the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium: "The ingress and egress is horrific. I don't mean to trigger Bears fans or concert-goers ... it is just brutal."
But despite their support for the idea two years ago, Bears' executives have repeatedly expressed their lack of interest in staying on the Lakefront after their Soldier Field lease expires. "We strongly believe the only site in the state of Illinois, in Cook County, is Arlington Heights," team CEO Warren told the "Pro Football Talk" podcast back in March. The team has said it intends to decide before the end of the summer whether to move forward with Arlington Heights or accept an offer from leaders in Indiana to move into a new publicly-financed stadium in Hammond.
The prospect of losing the Bears to the Hoosier State has helped propel the recent action in Springfield, but the Mayor seems unconvinced about the apparent urgency. "The Bears will be in the city of Chicago at least until 2033. This whole notion around Hammond, Indiana ... I just ... the merit of that threat I just call into question."
And Mayor Johnson asserted again that because the Bears were willing to discuss a potential lakefront stadium once, they're surely still into the idea, especially if it came with the infrastructure support and other relief being promised for Arlington Heights. "We can build a publicly-owned stadium in which the taxpayers benefit," he said.
But the Bears' public timeline for a stadium decision isn't the only clock the Mayor's up against. The Legislature's spring session is set to end in 20 days, and lawmakers also have to approve a budget for the fiscal year that starts in July. If the Mayor can somehow thread the needle to get the Legislature to chuck its "mega-projects" bill and approve incentives for a new lakefront stadium in Chicago in less than three weeks, it would leave him looking like Caleb Williams. But unless the team or the Governor publicly get on board, it may leave the Mayor looking more like Cade McNown.
