ILLINOIS MEDICAL DISTRICT (WBBM Newsradio) - Governor Pritzker said he's open to supporting the Bears' request for state assistance for development around the team's planned future stadium in Arlington Heights, and is clarifying one of his conditions for that support.
The Bears' latest plan for the old Arlington Park racetrack property spells out as much as $850 million in state taxpayer assistance for infrastructure and other projects in support of a new stadium.
During an unrelated event Wednesday at the UIC School of Public Health on Chicago's West side, the Governor said he hadn't looked over details of the proposal, but said he was open to state assistance for those kinds of projects.
"The state will help where we can on infrastructure and other things that are the job of the state," the governor said. "We do that for businesses all over the state."
Last month, the governor said the Bears needed to pay off the remainder of the loan on the 2003 Soldier Field renovation before he'd consider any further assistance.
On Wednesday, he spelled out what he said he meant: "We need to make sure that the taxpayers are not burdened by the debt that was put on in the building of the stadium if we're then going to go on and support more funding."
And he again said he wished the Bears would build a new stadium in Chicago, but as a private business, they can move wherever they like.