No, South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Phil Taillon still can’t tell you when the Chicago Bears are going to make their decision on where the new stadium will be.
No one, in fact, can answer that question — probably not even the team’s administration, Taillon told a group of people during the monthly luncheon held by the Lake County Advancement Committee and Legacy Foundation at the Welcome Center in Hammond Thursday afternoon. But if you were trying to decide the future of a multi-billion dollar investment, you’d probably want to take your time with it, too.
“I’m frustrated, too,” Taillon told the crowd about not having any new announcements for them. “Once you pick (the site), this is what you’re going to be for years to come, so we just have to remain patient. But as an economics person, if you don’t take (the opportunity to have everything ready for when the decision comes) seriously, you’re not doing the work.”
If the Bears decide they would rather move to Arlington Heights, Illinois, Taillon will of course be disappointed, but what the exercise has done for Northwest Indiana far outweighs even the stadium itself, he said. It’s given Northwest Indiana a seat at the table it’s not had for decades, if ever.
“You can’t put a dollar amount on the marketing this has given us. The Bears considering Northwest Indiana as a viable solution put us on the map,” he said. “Then when the Governor’s office reached out to us, all of us in Lake and Porter Counties came together, and I testified for S.B. 27.
“The state rarely gave us consideration, but that’s not the case anymore, and we are now thinking about ourselves in bigger and broader ways. Changing our mindset was the best thing that could’ve happened to us.”
During questions from the audience, Carole Moore, of Munster, asked why NWI leaders always seem to chase the “new and shiny things” rather than promote the gems already in place, such as the soon-to-be defunct Challenger Center at Purdue Northwest and the defunct Mascot Hall of Fame. The Challenger Center, for which Taillon sat on its Board of Directors, was hard thing for him to see, he said; the Mascot Hall of Fame, on the other hand, was in a tricky spot and was never able to get off the ground like it could’ve.
Taillon said the trick for him and the SSCVA is balancing the two: promoting what’s here while going after new things to keep people interested.
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Craig Huffman, of Chicago, said he was initially skeptical of the Bears coming to Hammond but is now on board. Many of his friends and fellow Bears fans, however, still aren’t.
“They don’t believe Hammond is real,” Huffman said.
Taillon believes the team building its stadium in Northwest Indiana would be a boon for the region.
“I talked to a local economist recently, and I couldn’t believe I asked him what he thought of the deal, but I did, and he said, ‘Typically in these deals, you don’t get the return-on-investment, but Northwest Indiana is the exception’,” Taillon said. “We have the location, the infrastructure and the diversity to be used effectively. It will start a domino effect.”
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.