The Chicago Bears stadium saga keeps churning out new storylines.
The latest comes out of a new report saying some state lawmakers are holding out hope to keep the team in Chicago, creating difficulties in getting a megaprojects bill passed before the end of the current legislative session on May 31 that would help keep the Bears in Illinois.
In an interview, the Chicago Tribune reports, Illinois Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) said he and other state lawmakers found out recently that the Bears had expressed interest in revisiting the idea of a lakefront stadium — something the team pitched two years ago — with Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office.
Cunningham, the cosponsor of the megaprojects bill aimed at keeping the Bears in Illinois, said he and other state lawmakers learned this before Johnson’s team told Chicago-based lawmakers about that conversation.
According to Cunningham, the report says, as state lawmakers face the May 31 deadline, the hope of still getting a new stadium in Chicago has jammed up discussions on the megaprojects bill that could pave the way for the Bears to leave the city for the suburbs.
Cunningham says some state lawmakers, specifically from Chicago, have continued to oppose discussions on the megaprojects bill, according to the report.
The Bears, meanwhile, released a statement Wednesday night saying the only site they’re considering in Illinois is Arlington Heights, with a site just over the state line near Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana, a second option.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Tuesday addressed the latest proceedings between the Bears and the league’s stadium committee at the league’s Spring Meeting in Orlando. He echoed the Bears’ insistence that Arlington Heights and Hammond are the only two sites they’re considering now.
“There was a specific update on the Bears with respect to the two sites that they are evaluating that are viable in the Bears’ mind and others, in ours — one in Illinois and one in Indiana,” Goodell said.
The megaprojects bill proposes to give the Bears and other developers of major projects in Illinois a property tax break, instead allowing them to make special payments both to the municipalities where the project is located and to the state. This is known as a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) plan.
The megaprojects bill has passed the state House but now must get through the state Senate, with the deadline just over a week away, before going to the desk of Gov. JB Pritzker for a signature.
While Illinois lawmakers scramble to get the megaprojects bill passed, Indiana state lawmakers have already passed their own bill, Senate Bill 27, that names a site near Wolf Lake in Hammond for a new Bears stadium and provides the framework for a stadium project.
