Fire moves in: Those are not slimmed-down Chicago Bears strutting into the old Halas Hall on the Lake Forest College campus. Now that the Bears have hauled the last of their gear to their new location near Interstate Highway 94 in Lake Forest, another Chicago-area sports team has moved in.
The Chicago Fire, a recent Major League Soccer expansion team, has been practicing on Farwell Field behind Halas Hall and using the building’s weight room, a locker room and a few offices since the end of March.
“It’s a good facility. The Bears seemed to think so until recently,” Fire communications director Adam Low said. “Our executive offices are still in River North, but this is a first-class training facility. It’s one-stop shopping–field, showers, lockers and offices, all in one place,” he said.
“You need a quality space that shows your players that you are serious about training and want to maintain a first-class professional image,” said head coach Bob Bradley. “That is what we get with this facility.”
Because the Fire also inherits a Lake Forest neighborhood sensitive about traffic, management has not opened the practices to the public.