Bears' stadium tone shifts: 'The focus now is both downtown and Arlington Heights'
PALM BEACH, Fla. — In a marked shift in public tone, Bears president/CEO Kevin Warren said Wednesday the team is considering both Arlington Heights and the lakefront as potential stadium sites. Even though the Bears have owned 326 acres in Arlington Heights for more than two years, they had maintained publicly their focus remained on building a stadium on the Museum Campus.
Wednesday was different.
“The focus now is both downtown and Arlington Heights,” Warren said at The Breakers, the site of the league’s annual meetings this week.
Warren said that the “next three-to-six months” will be critically important for the Bears’ stadium project. The Bears are conducting feasibility and traffic studies in Arlington Heights. The Bears spent $197.2 million on the former Arlington International Racecourse site.
A year ago, on the eve of the NFL draft, the Bears unveiled public plans for a domed stadium on the Museum Campus. Appetite to use public funding downtown has been limited.
Warren said that the stadium plan would work for either the downtown or suburban site.
Arlington Heights voted to approve a property tax deal for the Bears in December. That marked significant progress, though Warren said there is still more work to be done with the village. The Bears maintain that they will ask for no public funding to build the stadium itself, whether in the suburbs or the city, but will instead ask for public money for infrastructure improvements surrounding it.
Fairpoint Development has designed a plan to build on the former Michael Reese hospital site in Bronzeville. Warren mentioned the site in passing, calling it narrow and stating that it abutted train tracks.