The Cubs just bought 5 acres near Wrigley Field; the Bears signed a contract to buy a dairy farm in Du Page County; but the White Sox aren`t buying a developer`s plan for a new stadium south of the Loop.
The plot is thickening in that high-stakes regional soap opera called Stadia Mania.
The script is hard to follow because only the actors know which teams are bluffing and which are serious.
If all three teams made good on threats to leave the city, a small corner of Chicago`s northwest suburbs would soon boast the largest ensemble of new sports facilities this side of New Jersey`s Meadowlands complex.
If they are all bluffing–as some insiders believe–fans will be traveling the familiar city paths to their Wrigley, Comiskey and Soldier Field landmarks for a long time.
But which is it?
Consider the latest twist: The Cubs last week completed purchase of a 700-car parking lot a block northwest of Wrigley Field.
How much the Cubs paid was not disclosed, but the acquisition tends to undermine recent threats that the team may go elsewhere if night games are not allowed at Wrigley Field.
Donald Grenesko, the Cubs executive vice president for operations, warned against reading too much into the transaction. He said Wrigley Field needs more parking in the next three to five years no matter what the team does over the long haul.
But he also said the purchase ”shows the community that, yes, we do care and are willing to make an investment.”
Specifically, the Cubs bought the large parking lot west of the House of the Good Shepherd, a Roman Catholic home for battered women at 1126 W. Grace St.
Because the nuns who run Good Shepherd already used the land for fan parking, the net gain in parking will be minimal, Grenesko conceded.
But the buy is nonetheless significant, if only as evidence that the Cubs are serious about winning neighborhood support for a limited schedule of night games. Providing more off-street parking, many would agree, is one way to win over neighborhood residents worried about traffic.
”Lights are still our first choice,” Grenesko said, ”and without them we cannot stay at Wrigley.”
The Cubs want lights to reap the higher television revenues that evening games command and to comply with baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth`s ruling that future post-season games be played at night.
Last year, after the legislature refused to scrap antinoise laws that effectively ban night baseball at Wrigley, Cub General Manager Dallas Green warned the team might jump to a new stadium in Schaumburg.
But threats involving the northwest suburbs are becoming a kind of cliche in Chicago`s stadium melodrama.
Last Tuesday, the Bears leaked a not-so-veiled threat to build a stadium complex west of Roselle in north central Du Page County.
Bear sources said the team contracted to buy a 500-acre dairy farm north of Lake Street between the suburbs of Roselle and Hanover Park. They hinted the land could be developed into an office and resort complex, all anchored by a new football stadium.
But skeptics were quick to observe that the Bear bombshell could be a bluff, though a far more sophisticated one than the Cub`s unconvincing feint toward Schaumburg.
The Bears are locked in a bitter dispute with the Chicago Park District over terms of the team`s long-term lease at the district`s Soldier Field.
Bear management has described that lease as the worst in professional football. Under its terms, the park district keeps 12 percent of all gate receipts, a $1 surcharge on each ticket and all revenue from parking and concessions.
Yet the team`s frustration didn`t turn into an attack until January, when the park district was unable to buy liability insurance for the Bears` two conference playoff games.
More Top Picks Best Reading Glasses For Women
Under the lease, the district is supposed to provide insurance; so Bear executives announced that a legal breach had occurred and that all lease terms were open to question.
”We`re taking a look at all our options,” said Bears President Michael McCaskey after the insurance blow-up. ”We`ve got to step back and take a look at where the Bears will be playing in the 1990s.”
By the end of January, the Bears had signed a contract for the Du Page County farm.
But some insiders aren`t so sure the family-owned football franchise has the means to tackle what amounts to a quarter-billion-dollar real estate development.
But most concede that the move puts the Bears in what could be called a win/win situation. They win if the Du Page threat helps them negotiate more favorable terms at Soldier Field. They can always sell the land to another developer, probably at a profit. And they win if the park district tries to stonewall on the lease, forcing a legal confrontation that might eventually free the team to utilize its Du Page holdings.
As might be expected, park officials say the Bears have little claim on a better deal at Soldier Field, and certainly no right to leave.
”They`re wrong,” said Michael J. Hennessy, general counsel for the district. ”I don`t know where they get the idea there was a breach. We have a solid contract with them until 1999.”
Because insurance has become nearly impossible to buy, Hennessy said, the district`s inability to provide the coverage can`t be considered a violation of the lease. He did allow that the Bears may be due some minor concessions if no insurance can be found for next season.
The White Sox, meanwhile, are also crafting a suburban plan in the event they can`t do better for themselves in the city.
Sox management has vowed to leave Comiskey Park, which they say has become a maintenance headache. They even promise to decide this year between two courses: collaboration with a group of developers on a new stadium in the South Loop or a unilateral withdrawl to west suburban Addison, where Sox owners control 150 acres at Swift Road and Lake Street.
Skeptics wonder if the Sox are as intent on a new facility as they want to appear. Their real strategy, some say, is to pit the city against the Du Page suburb in a bidding war of tax abatements, low-interest loans and other incentives.
Whatever the truth of that speculation, Addison seems to be winning the competition; or more accurately, the South Loop deal seems to be losing.
Last summer, after the Sox flaunted their Addison option, Mayor Harold Washington asked two of the city`s savviest real estate developers, Daniel Shannon and Robert Wislow, to coax the team into playing at a stadium that would be built on railyards south of Roosevelt Road at the Chicago River.
Those negotiations have reached an impasse.
The trouble, say sources familiar with the talks, is that Sox chieftains Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn insist on a baseball-only stadium. Shannon and Wislow want a larger football-baseball configuration, arguing that the Bears must be brought in the deal in order to achieve enough revenue to finance the $150 million edifice.
The two sides are also miles apart on how to apportion that revenue.
Sox owners want to keep all proceeds from admissions, from parking, from concessions, even from in-stadium billboards. The only money left the developers to pay off construction bonds would be rent payments on sky boxes and luxury loge seats.
But the developers say their analysis shows that, in addition to all sky box and loge rentals, they will need 45 percent of all parking, 10 percent of concessions and 8 percent of the gate. Even then, say the developers, there won`t be enough money to swing the deal without the Bears` 10 home games.
”I think they`re struggling,” said Reinsdorf about the mayor`s development team. He offered that their effort may prove fruitless ”unless they get some help from the city.”
Yet the cash-strapped and politically fractured city is hardly in a position to be of much help.
Even so, some insiders aren`t so sure that the Sox will pack for Addison anytime soon.
Or as one Shannon-Wislow aide put it: ”If we can`t make it work in the city, how are they going to make it work out there?”