Planners keep drawing new homes for the Chicago Bears, with renderings of football stadiums full of bells and whistles. But a common thread to the proposals is that the Bears aren’t involved.
The latest would put the Bears in Bridgeport, on the site of the White Sox’s Rate Field. But like some of the proposals before it, this one was drawn up without participation from the team. The Bears have said previously that they are focused on pursuing a $2 billion stadium across the state line in Hammond or in suburban Arlington Heights, and that the Rate Field site was unsuitable, citing in part its limited size.
Sterling Bay CEO Andy Gloor made a surprise informal pitch of the plan to Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren, along with Carl Williams, a real estate developer who is the father of Bears star quarterback Caleb Williams, Gloor told the Tribune. But the team said they declined to pursue the plan.
Gloor described the meeting as a casual breakfast encounter rather than a formal presentation, pivoting off his friendship with Carl Williams and Sterling Bay’s work on a potential White Sox relocation to the South Loop. Williams could not immediately be reached on Thursday.
“I’m a huge Bears fan, and I’d love them to stay here (in Chicago),” Gloor said. “I was outlining why it might be a win-win for the Bears. It sounds like they had their minds made up to go elsewhere, but I think it’s a pretty compelling site.”
The proposal, according to a PowerPoint presentation of the plan obtained by the Tribune, calls for the construction of a mixed-use development with a football stadium on the site’s south end. The new stadium could be constructed over land just south of Rate Field while the White Sox keep playing at the current ballpark, until they leave for a proposed South Loop site, according to the presentation.
The renderings also appear to place the new stadium between 37th Street and Pershing Road on the north and south and between the railroad tracks and the Dan Ryan on the west and east, likely displacing much of the Chicago Housing Authority’s 343-unit Wentworth Gardens complex.
The proposal calls for a $5.8 billion initial stadium and campus spread over 200 acres, at least 100 of which would have to be acquired. Funding would depend in part on $1.5 billion in federal rail infrastructure financing, known as RRIF; $400 million in tax increment financing, or TIF; and speculative estimates of $800 million in cash equity from the Bears, $600 million from naming rights and $900 million from personal seat licenses paid by season ticket holders. The plan would also credit the Bears $300 million for their Arlington Heights property.
The PowerPoint plan featured a rendering of a stadium that matched a rendering posted to Instagram by the global architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill on Wednesday. In posting the renderings, the firm described the idea as a “conceptual proposal” of a stadium-anchored mixed-use development that would include housing, entertainment and parks, among other amenities. “Like many in our home city of Chicago, we are eager to enable” the Bears to stay in the city, Skidmore’s Instagram post said.
Sterling Bay did not commission or pay for the stadium renderings, according to the architecture firm, which said it had shared the drawings with a small circle, including Sterling Bay’s Gloor.
Skidmore managing partner Adam Semel emphasized in an interview with the Tribune that the concept was not a formal project, and that SOM itself had not pitched any such project to local officials. SOM also said it has not participated in specific financing discussions.
But he said the firm hoped stakeholders and government officials would be “inspired” by its possibilities, pointing to the success of other sports-anchored districts such as Wrigleyville.
Officials for Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has been overly optimistic about any plan that would keep the Bears in the city, said he was receptive to the idea.
“When stakeholders with a track record of investing in Chicago come to the table with ideas, the Mayor is always willing to meet and listen, as many developers can attest,” mayoral spokesperson Griffin Krueger said in a statement, adding that developers’ ideas “will be vetted thoroughly” and require “community engagement and support.”
“The bottom line is that the Mayor knows that Chicago is and should remain the home of the Bears and will continue to work with stakeholders across the region to make it so,” he said.
The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority owns Rate Field and its surrounding surface parking lots, which means the site is free from property taxes. ISFA CEO Frank Bilecki said Thursday he had not heard from anyone associated with the project.
Team officials have been waiting for state lawmakers to pass legislation that would give them a tax break and money for infrastructure such as utilities and roads. Gov. JB Pritzker has said he supports infrastructure funding but doesn’t want taxpayers to pay for a stadium, a sentiment many fans have shared publicly.
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At least one key lawmaker is open to the Bridgeport idea, though he acknowledged several caveats. State Sen. Bill Cunningham, a Chicago Democrat and one of the General Assembly’s lead negotiators on a Bears stadium, called the proposal “very intriguing,” though he said many details would need to be worked out, with significant community input.
Cunningham said he first heard about the concept a couple of years ago through organized labor, when the White Sox were considering building their own stadium on a swath of land known as “The 78,” just south of Roosevelt Road near the Chicago River. In what he called “idle chitchat,” he discussed with a local labor leader whether the Rate Field site, at 35th Street and Shields Avenue just west of the Dan Ryan Expressway, would make a good home for a new Bears stadium.
“I think it’s a legitimate proposal, and one that should be in the mix when it comes to Bears stadium discussions,” Cunningham said. He noted that Rate Field is accessible from the Dan Ryan, the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red and Green lines, and Metra trains.
“It would be way more transit accessible than any other Bears stadium proposal out there by probably a factor of 10,” Cunningham said, adding that much of the land is state-owned. “Ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, it’s up to the Bears. I’ve said this before, what we are committed to is a privately financed stadium.”
The General Assembly adjourned in June without passing legislation aimed at keeping the Bears in Illinois. Two competing proposals each cleared only one chamber.
The House plan, geared toward the Arlington Heights site, would let the team freeze its property tax assessments for 25 to 45 years in exchange for payments to local taxing bodies.
The Senate plan, led by Cunningham, would allow Cook County municipalities with more than 70,000 residents, such as Arlington Heights and Chicago, to create stadium finance authorities. That would let the Bears build on land that is or would become publicly owned, sparing the stadium from property taxes.
“If we are expecting the Bears to pay for the stadium, which we are, then, obviously, the Bears are going to have a lot of say about where the stadium is ultimately located,” Cunningham said.
Indeed, with the fall veto session just weeks away and Bears stadium legislation expected on the agenda, everyone from rank-and-file lawmakers to Pritzker has said it will be up to the Bears to choose where they want to build a new home. And the Bears have given no indication they are interested in Bridgeport. Team officials have said they studied the Rate Field site, along with the former Michael Reese Hospital and South Works steel plant sites, and found none suitable.
In June, the Bears said the team’s board of directors had voted to advance the Hammond project, saying it “will transform the region.” Since then, talks have continued in Illinois, keeping the door open for Arlington Heights.
The White Sox lease at Rate Field runs through 2029, and the Bears’ Soldier Field lease runs through 2033. But the Bears’ timeline hinges more on Indiana, where lawmakers have already approved legislation to finance a stadium through new hotel, food and beverage, and stadium taxes.
Chicago lawmakers are reluctant to help the Bears leave the city, which makes long-shot ideas like the Rate Field plan enticing. The veto session in November and December will be crucial in determining whether Illinois officials can come together on a deal.
In 2024, the Bears proposed building a new stadium on the lakefront to replace Soldier Field, but state leaders said they had no appetite for spending state money to help build it, and the plan was dropped. The team also proposed an enclosed stadium in a mixed-use development on the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse in Arlington Heights, on land it bought for $197 million. Without final passage of the House legislation allowing the team to negotiate property taxes, that plan has also stalled, leaving Indiana as the leading site.
baiduhai’s Brian Rogal contributed to this report.