The decision by leaders at the state Capitol to end their spring session without final action on a bill to encourage the Chicago Bears to stay in Illinois appears to put the team in a position its owners may never have wanted to face.
Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren told the "Pro Football Talk" podcast back in March that the Bears had narrowed down its search for a potential stadium site: "The only site in the state of Illinois, in Cook County, is in Arlington Heights."
That is, of course, the old Arlington Park horse-racing track the team purchased back in 2023 under Warren's predecessor Ted Phillips. The only other potential site, Warren said, was in Hammond, where the state of Indiana has offered to build a new stadium for the team to rent with an option to buy.
When news of the Bears' contact with Hoosier leaders first came to light, House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch told reporters that the team was just negotiating, and as recently as last month, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson suggested it was nothing more than a ploy to get a better deal: "This whole notion around Hammond, Indiana ... the merit of that threat I just call that into question."
And as Illinois lawmakers considered the "mega-projects" bill that would have given the team the property tax certainty it had requested for the Arlington Heights property, team executives and the Johnson Administration confirmed they'd had several conversations in recent weeks about venues in Chicago. That appears to have convinced some Chicago representatives that the city was still on the table, despite Warren's statements to the contrary, and dried up support for any incentive that would have made it easier for the Bears to move to the suburbs.
And in the wee small hours of the Legislature's final day of action, the Senate's "UNO reverse" proposal to let Cook County's largest communities create their own stadium authorities with an eye toward having the Bears build a publicly-owned stadium never got a vote in the House.
For its part, the Bears released a statement saying in part that it's sticking with its late-spring or summer decision timeline. But that potentially puts the team and its chairman George McCaskey in the difficult position of either waiting for Illinois to approve incentives and jeopardizing its internal timeline, saying "yes" to Arlington Heights now and risk proving right those skeptics who say the team's overtures to Indiana were merely negotiating tactics, or approving a move to Indiana and risking what could be generational damage to the Bears' public image. And don't get it twisted: if the Bears move to Hammond, the team and its image-conscious executive team will wear the Starter jacket for the decision ... not Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Mayors Johnson of Chicago or Tinaglia of Arlington Heights, or the state Legislature.
Editor's note: Sign up on the front page of our website to receive Palm Card by WBBM Newsradio Political Editor Geoff Buchholz every Sunday morning.
