CHICAGO (CN) — The Chicago Bears publicly revealed their plans for a new lakefront stadium campus on Wednesday, alongside a deeply supportive Mayor Brandon Johnson.
"We're talking about thousands of lives that will benefit from this investment," Johnson said at a press conference the Bears and his administration held at Chicago's Soldier Field, where the Bears currently play, on Wednesday.
The entire project — which would demolish the century-old Soldier Field but expand the stadium campus' footprint along Lake Michigan — comes with a $4.7 billion price tag. Divided between constructions costs for the stadium proper and infrastructure improvements for the surrounding area, roughly half the project would be funded by the public.
Team Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Stadium Affairs Karen Murphy laid out the proposed funding plan in more detail.
The stadium itself will cost about $3.2 billion to build, she said, with the Bears' private owners contributing a little over $2 billion and the team requesting a further $300 million from the NFL. The remaining $900 million would be funded by the state via the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. Murphy claimed that $900 million could be generated via a 2% hotel tax, and by refinancing the debt taxpayers still owe for prior renovations to Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate Field, where the Chicago White Sox play.
"In doing that, and extending the debt bonds out for 40 years, we will free up enough capacity that we believe could be close to or exceed $1 billion dollars," Murphy said.
As of 2024, there is still more than $620 million in outstanding debt for the Soldier Field renovations and about $50 million for the Guaranteed Rate Field renovations.
The public would also foot the bill for the proposed $1.5 billion in infrastructure improvements, which Murphy said would occur in three phases over at least five years. She attempted to soften the sticker shock for such a large investment by claiming the project would create thousands of jobs, attract events like the Super Bowl — which Chicago has never hosted — and drive billions in economic impact for the city, county and state.
"The private and public investments in this project are large, but the return on the investment is also significant," Murphy said.
Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren echoed her comments, telling reporters, "We'll make this a place where people want to come and spend time."
Reception to the pitch — among press, community groups and state leaders — was chilly.
Chicago, Cook County and Illinois are already facing numerous funding pressures at the moment, including for public education, caring for a growing population of new immigrants and for the ongoing effort to replace more than 400,000 lead water pipes running beneath the city.
The Bears are also not a publicly-owned franchise — their principal owner is the billionaire McCaskey family. At a separate event Wednesday, Democratic Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker questioned why, amid so many other pressing budget needs, the public should pay billions to fund their private ambitions.
He referenced a failed ballot referendum from earlier this month in Kansas City, where voters rejected raising public funds to build a new stadium for the Kansas City Royals.
"I think this is a recognition that these are private businesses," Pritzker told reporters. "That the owners of these private businesses need to put a lot more forward in order to have their dreams fulfilled and not just rely upon the taxpayers of Illinois to make that happen for them."
Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch also expressed skepticism, telling the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday that were the stadium proposal to come before the state Legislature now, it would fail "miserably."
The pitch revealed Wednesday also comes after the Bears spent years — and almost $200 million — flirting with idea of abandoning Chicago for a stadium in the nearby suburb of Arlington Heights.
In February 2023, the team purchased 326 acres of land in Arlington Heights for about $197 million, which Warren said makes it the suburb's largest landowner. The team began clearing the site last October to prepare for construction of a new stadium, but backed away after local school districts claimed the land was worth $160 million and that the Bears would have to pay corresponding property taxes.
On Wednesday, Warren said the team still owned the Arlington Heights land but that its "focus" was no longer on the suburb.
"We said it before and after today we're clear that our focus is on the city of Chicago and this museum campus area," he said.
Some predicted on Wednesday that the city, if it moved forward on the proposal, would face lawsuits from public space advocacy groups like Friends of the Parks and Protect Our Parks. The latter group filed several federal lawsuits to block construction of the Obama Presidential Center, which will effectively privatize 20 acres of public parkland on Chicago's south side, while the former sued to try and stop the 2002 renovations to Soldier Field.
Though both sets of lawsuits failed, they show that some Chicagoans do not take private intrusion on public land sitting down.
"My vision for the city of Chicago is very clear, particularly around environmental justice, in creating more open space," Johnson said Wednesday in response to a reporter raising those concerns.
The Friends of The Park put out a statement condemning the proposal after Wednesday's press conference concluded.
"As is often the case in Chicago, the powerful and wealthy are demanding that our entire city stop and fast track their plans to expand operations on the people's lakefront," the group said.
Despite these controversies, Warren said he hoped to put the proposal in front of Illinois lawmakers as a bill before the end of the state legislative session in May.
"We feel that the time is now. Every year that we wait it's $150 to $200 million of increased costs that ultimately we'll have to figure out," Warren said.
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