Bears President Michael McCaskey said Monday that he sees no hope of building a new stadium for the team in downtown Chicago, reigniting the debate over whether the team might bolt for the suburbs.
“There’s not going to be a new stadium built in downtown Chicago,” McCaskey said in an interview with the Tribune.
The Bears, Mayor Richard Daley and Gov. Jim Edgar haggled privately for much of last year over whether to build a domed stadium just west of McCormick Place. The parties were close to an agreement before the talks fell apart this spring, those involved in the negotiations said.
“Now we will have to turn our attention elsewhere,” McCaskey said.
Already, the Bears are scouting the suburbs for a stadium site, just as they did two years ago when the last serious negotiations over a downtown stadium bogged down.
What the team is likely to find, however, is that while the large tracts of land remain, there is an increased skepticism among suburban officials about the team’s intentions and the feasibility of using public money to build a private stadium.
Many of the sites that the team previously considered in Cook and DuPage Counties remain available, though a 450-acre tract along the Northwest Tollway in Hoffman Estates already is emerging as the front-runner.
“If the Bears were ever to leave the City of Chicago, Hoffman Estates is the best city in the world for them to come to,” said Hoffman Estates Mayor Mike O’Malley, a friend of McCaskey’s.
But even O’Malley is clear about one thing: His town isn’t going to pay for the Bears’ new home. It can’t. With just 50,000 people, Hoffman Estates does not have the tax base needed to support a project that could cost $350 million or more.
If McCaskey wants a new stadium in the suburbs, he will have to build it with private funds, O’Malley and other mayors said.
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During negotiations over the downtown site, McCaskey offered to help raise $175 million in a public-private partnership. But even that would barely cover half the cost of a new stadium.
Edgar would consider using state funds to pay for roads or other infrastructure improvements around the stadium, as he did when Sears, Roebuck and Co. moved from the Loop to a Hoffman Estates site near the proposed stadium tract in 1992, said Edgar spokesman Thomas Hardy.
But Edgar draws the line at using any taxpayer funds to build a suburban stadium or to operate it, Hardy said.
Sports facilities have proven to be more of a financial drain than an economic boon for American cities that have paid to build them, several studies have shown. Besides, mayors said, cities these days are shouldering more of the cost of social services as the federal and state governments cut back, so competition for any new resources already is fierce.
“Most of our suburbs don’t have the financial wherewithal to build a stadium,” said Mayor Arlene Mulder of Arlington Heights, which was once eyed by the Bears.
And it is unlikely that the General Assembly would raise broader taxes on sales or income to help build a stadium. Lawmakers balked at raising the income tax this year to help fund schools and would be even less willing to back a tax increase as the 1998 elections near.
It is not just the money that is giving suburban mayors pause, however. Suburban officials said it is likely that McCaskey is flirting with the suburbs only to increase his bargaining leverage with the city, just as he did nearly two years ago when he threatened to take the team to Gary.
In Aurora, where the Bears eyed a 207-acre tract in 1995, officials have heard nothing from McCaskey recently but don’t seem too concerned about it.
“He was using that as a bargaining chip” last time around, said Bill Catching, a spokesman for the Aurora mayor’s office. “Realistically, I’m not sure they would move out here.”
There may be reason for the suburban skepticism. The Bears are reportedly already looking elsewhere in the city for a stadium site, according to Edward Bedore, Mayor Daley’s chief negotiator in the stadium discussions.
McCaskey has made inquiries of the Port of Chicago about Southeast Side land, he said.
“He is shopping all over,” Bedore said.
“I don’t like to do any predictions with Mike McCaskey,” he added. “I’ve only been doing this for 20 years. . . . This started in 1975 when we first started to look for a stadium.”
Indeed, negotiations over a new Bears stadium have been long-running and convoluted. Most recently, Edgar has pushed for a domed stadium near McCormick Place that could be used for events other than Bears games. Daley, meanwhile, has urged a refurbishing of Soldier Field–an idea the Bears have resisted.
Any momentum that the dome project had in the General Assembly vanished this spring when Bulls and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and Blackhawks owner William Wirtz floated the idea of building a privately financed, open-air stadium downtown. The proposal was widely believed to be a ploy to stall consideration of the dome, which would compete for events with Reinsdorf’s and Wirtz’s United Center.
Edgar has refused to allow a privately financed, open-air stadium on the McCormick Place site, saying taxpayers should not have to underwrite a facility that could only be used a few times a year.
Whether McCaskey’s efforts will help revive negotiations over the domed stadium is unclear. Daley has removed the stadium from his list of legislative priorities for the General Assembly’s fall veto session.
“Is (a downtown stadium) truly dead?” asked Edgar spokesman Hardy. “I don’t know that anything is truly dead until they break ground on another location.”