Bears vote to advance stadium-development plan in Indiana, taking another step toward leaving Chicago

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The Chicago Bears are putting pressure on the state of Illinois after lawmakers failed to pass a stadium-funding bill Monday. With the Illinois House now on adjournment, the Bears took another step toward signaling they are serious about moving to Indiana, announcing their board of directors voted to "advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana," the team announced Friday.

In a statement, team chairman George McCaskey and president and CEO Kevin Warren said they believe a new stadium in Indiana will "bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses."

Link to tweet

The Bears have yet to settle on an exact site for their stadium in Indiana, but will continue to explore their options after the Indiana project was approved Thursday.

The vote — and team statement — does not definitively mean the Bears are leaving Chicago or Illinois, but it signals the team is ready to ratchet up the threat of that possibility.

https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/breaking-news/article/bears-vote-to-advance-stadium-development-plan-in-indiana-taking-another-step-toward-leaving-chicago-163059239.html

[Chasstev365]

1. Good! JB Pritzker is not going to be shaken down by greedy billionaire sports teams.

I think the McKaskey family is trying to get taxpayers to build them a stadium for virtually free only to increase the value of the team so they can sell the franchise.

[a kennedy]

2. This is just sick.......and there goes the oldest rivalry in the NFL.

Damn…..just isn’t gonna be the same. 🥰 💚 💛

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. The Bears can go to hell.

First they destroyed the symmetry of Soldier Field. But that wasn't good enough so now they're trying to extort Illinois taxpayers to spend billions on a new stadium in Illinois. The McCaskeys are richer than Croesus finance the thing themselves, or maybe Indiana taxpayers instead.

[Morbius]

4. I posted this to another thread.

Illinois taxpayers are still in debt for renovations to Soldier Field, somewhere between $467 - $534 million. Also, taxpayers shelled out $191 million to build the new Comiskey Park, today called Guaranteed Rate Field, opened in 1991. Some $50 million is still owed (35 years later!); this has been paid down with hotel taxes.

Illinois taxpayers have very little stomach for more taxes to support stadiums. With good reason.

However, this is only part of the reason the Bears appear to be moving to Indiana. The Bears own property in Arlington Heights, Illinois. They bought it about three years ago. They didn't confirm beforehand that they would get some kind of property tax certainty, and were stunned to find out the proposed property tax would be hundreds of millions per year. Illinois lawmakers have been trying to pass a law ensuring a property tax break, and Chicago members of the Illinois legislature - at the alleged instruction of Chicago's mayor, Brandon Johnson - have sabotaged that bill to try and force the Bears to stay within the city of Chicago.

So thanks to the mayor of Chicago, the state of Illinois is probably going to lose the Bears. The team was not looking for public funding of anything beyond infrastructure improvements to Arlington Heights (which are necessary and pretty doggone hefty at roughly a billion dollars). They were insisting on confirming they wouldn't be paying some $53 million every year in property taxes. The McCaskey family, owners of the Bears, don't have any other businesses. The team is worth over six billion but they don't make a tenth of that every season. I think fans should understand the Bears aren't the bad guys here. The NFL salary cap is designed so each team pays roughly half its revenue to the players, and the other half goes to the team. That salary cap just went above $300 million per season. Therefore, the Chicago Bears aren't earning billions every year. They simply can't afford a property tax hit like this.

Now, the state of Indiana has plans for massive tax increases to pay for a stadium, at a location which also needs about a billion in infrastructure. The Bears wouldn't be smart businesspeople if they didn't listen. I think Indiana taxpayers will rue the day it happens.