As the Chicago Bears embark on a plan to build a new stadium near their current Soldier Field home, Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor said she has no regrets about having invited the team to relocate 50 miles north to her city’s lakefront.
Taylor said she knew when she invited the Bears to explore putting a stadium on undeveloped lakefront property in June it was a longshot, but the team responded and she also heard from other developers who wanted to be part of any such project.
“We heard from a couple of people with interest in Waukegan,” she said. “One person wanted to do something with solar there and help the Bears build a green stadium.”
Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor. (Courtesy of Taylor campaign)
Sources told the Chicago Tribune, Bears officials hope to build a $4.6 billion enclosed stadium along Chicago’s lakefront with half the money coming from taxpayers. The team plans to remain in Chicago despite invitations from a number of suburban municipalities to relocate outside the city limits.
When the Bears’ plans to build a new stadium as part of a mixed-use project on the 326-acre site of the former Arlington International Racecourse hit a snag, Taylor said she felt compelled to reach out to the team. The mayor said she felt it her invitation might at least lead to good exposure and potentially other development.
“We have to explore every opportunity for economic development,” Taylor said. “That’s part of my job. Some manufacturing companies are looking at Waukegan because of the availability of water. We are in the very, very preliminary stages of talking.”
Not long after sending a letter to the Bears suggesting the team consider Waukegan, Taylor said a real estate company representing the team contacted her. They sent drones to look at proposed locations.
Before building their new Chicago home, the Bears must overcome skepticism from Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois General Assembly, watchdog groups like the Civic Federation and Friends of the Parks who successfully drove “Star Wars” creator George Lucas away.
The proposed stadium itself would cost $3.2 billion, with another $1.4 billion in proposed infrastructure improvements, sources told the Tribune. The Bears are pledging an investment of $2.3 billion. The infrastructure work and remaining costs would be funded by tax dollars.
Some of the proposed public funding would come from the sale of bonds by the Illinois Sports Facility Authority (ISFB), which is still carrying $619 million of debt for past Soldier Field renovations and construction of the White Sox Guaranteed Rate Field. The Bears want to increase the current 2% hotel tax currently going to the IFSB.
A file photo of Waukegan’s lakefront. (Steve Sadin/Lake County News-Sun)
Any funding from the ISFB requires approval by the state legislature. So far, some legislative leaders have not warmed to the Bears’ suggested plans.
Shortly before Bears officials announced details of their plans, the governor said, “I remain skeptical and I wonder whether it’s a good deal. There are a lot of priorities and I’m not sure this is among the highest priorities for taxpayers.”
Joe Ferguson, the president of the Civic Federation, said both the Bears and the Sox — the baseball team is also looking at a new stadium near the Bears proposed site — must show vetted cost and revenue projections.
“Everybody wants to keep the teams (in Chicago) — the question is on what terms,” Ferguson said. “There’s not a lot of information necessary to say one of these (plans) actually is viable, or whether it’s a way to take us to the cleaners when we’re already carrying hundreds of millions of dollars of debt for the last time we did something like this.”
Chicago Tribune reporters Jeremy Gorner, Dan Petrella, Robert McCoppin and Brian J. Rogal contributed to this report.
