CHICAGO CITY HALL (WBBM Newsradio) -- Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has a full wish list of priorities for his meetings this week with state lawmakers in Springfield, including the future of Soldier Field ... with or without the Chicago Bears.
"The (Museum) Campus needs a makeover," the mayor told reporters Tuesday morning in his office at City Hall as he prepared to head to the state Capitol. "The ingress and egress is horrific. I don't mean to trigger Bears fans or concert-goers ... it is just brutal."
Mayor Johnson said the plan he and Bears executives put forward two years ago to reimagine the Museum Campus around a new publicly-owned domed stadium would have brought that needed makeover, but the team and the NFL have said the only two viable locations for the next Bears stadium are the former Arlington Park property the team purchased in 2023 and a potential site in northwest Indiana.
The mayor also signaled he was not on board with the House-passed "mega-projects" bill that team executives say they need to build a new stadium in Arlington Heights, calling it "economically unsound."
"What is it that we need for the people of Chicago?" the mayor asked rhetorically. "Let's just start there as a baseline. And what I need for the people of Chicago ... our people need to be able to work."
He went on to say that carve-outs that would hire minority construction workers on the project - which he said would require crew members to spend as much as two hours a day commuting - is "not something anyone in Chicago would want."
"I don't know why any Chicago legislator would vote for anything that doesn't benefit the people they represent and vote for," the mayor said.
Says Chicago should be 'prioritized' in discussion about Bears' future
Says Chicago should be 'prioritized' in discussion about Bears' future
