Bears Commit To Revised Arlington Heights Stadium Complex

Rendering of Bears stadium by Manica Architecture

New details have been revealed about the potential Chicago Bears stadium at 2200 Euclid Avenue in Arlington Heights. The plans mark the latest chapter in the team’s multi-year struggle to secure a new home while seeking tax funds from the city, county, and state. The effort is being led by the team in partnership with design firm Manica Architecture.

Site context view of the Bears conceptual masterplan via Google Maps

Over two years ago, the team announced plans to leave their current home at Soldier Field in favor of a new domed stadium. Since then, we’ve seen various proposals, including a potential redevelopment of Soldier Field, a new lakefront stadium, and the current mixed-use campus replacing the former Arlington International Racecourse.

Rendering of Bears stadium by Manica Architecture

At its core, the team is looking to fully own its stadium—and all the revenue generated within it—as well as benefit from a surrounding mixed-use campus. Currently, the city owns Soldier Field and thus receives a large portion of game-day revenue, along with all revenue from non-Bears-related events.

In an era where stadium districts are major revenue generators, it’s no surprise the Bears want a bigger piece of the pie. The Bears are the seventh most valuable team in the NFL, worth $8.2 billion with an annual revenue of $629 million, according to Forbes, while playing roughly 8–10 home games a year. Meanwhile, the city still owes over $500 million from the team’s 2002 reconstruction of Soldier Field.

After failing to secure sufficient public support or funding to demolish most of Soldier Field and replace it with a new lakefront stadium, the team is now returning to Arlington Heights with a design similar to Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium—also designed by Manica. To make this happen, they are requesting $855 million in public infrastructure funding, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Bears stadium rendering (top) – Allegiant stadium (bottom)

Bears stadium rendering (top) – Allegiant stadium (bottom)

Anchoring the northern edge of the property, the proposed stadium would contain 60,000 seats, slightly fewer than Soldier Field’s 61,000, but would be expandable to around 70,000 which is the minimum required to host a Super Bowl. The team sees hosting the event, which tends to favor warm-weather cities, as a key opportunity driving the push for a new facility.

The stadium would feature a large window offering views of Arlington Heights, as well as increased suite and standing-room capacity. The team plans to host 10 home games annually, along with college football showcases, high school games, eight concerts per year, private events, and tours, totaling an estimated 370 events annually.

Rendering of Bears stadium by Manica Architecture

The surrounding mixed-use complex has been partially scaled back from the original vision, including the removal of several lagoons in favor of additional parking. The development will include 1,150 residential units, 400 hotel rooms, 300,000 square feet of retail space, and 200,000 square feet of office space across 326 acres.

PREVIOUS site plan of Arlington Heights proposal by Hart Howerton Architects

The stadium alone is projected to cost around $2 billion, with the entire complex estimated at $5 billion. The state has also asked the Bears to pay off the remaining Soldier Field debt before negotiating any new public funding. Additionally, the team will seek tax breaks from the city of Arlington Heights. As of now, no official timeline has been announced.

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51 Comments on "Bears Commit To Revised Arlington Heights Stadium Complex"

  1. The large windows to the view of Arlington Heights is just laughable. Cant see how this gets off the ground if they keep asking for tax breaks the state is very unwilling to give.

    • The window is probably oriented towards the Chicago skyline, which will be more than 20 miles away.

      The overall development proposal keeps getting worse. At this point less than 72 of the 326 acres will be for uses other than detention, parking, & stadium. Which, with the 1,150 homes, is less dense than a typical Chicago single family home neighborhood. If you include the entire 326 acres it is fewer homes than the site would generate if it was entirely rezoned with 1/4 acre lots.

    • Steve River North | October 2, 2025 at 8:51 am | Reply

      Yeah, the window is facing SE over the property towards AH, but the town is two story homes and trees, would not see any of them. However, if google maps 3D view is correct they could see downtown Chicago on clear day. LOL

    • The whole point is to bring in daylight…not views. The stadium in Las Vegas that this design is based off of is great and doesn’t have a depressing feel (like a lot of other domes do). This will be a great place to watch a game–especially in December. And I’ve always associated the whole “showing off the skyline from your stadium” with mid-tier cities anyway. It’s like, “Lookit us! We’s got tall buildins!”. Have at it, Nashville.

      • You have a whole see through dome to bring in daylight, this is just a cope for the Arlington Bears horribly bland stadium.

        • This person always comes with the worst takes, but hot damn, they left a steamy one!

          I don’t care for name-calling, but I got a mental list going.

          • Truth Be Told | October 2, 2025 at 5:39 pm |

            Drew, you don’t have anything going mentally. You’re an idiot.

          • Bears games were one of the few spaces hard R suburbites would crawl out of the burbs. Good riddance to their tailgating, lifted trucks clogging up other areas.

            “Showing off the skyline.” I can’t imagine a single fan base that doesn’t enjoy the picturesque views of their city in conjunction with the pride of the game and their team. Major league sports were created to support a city, not to draw thousands of people to the middle of nowhere. And the cities that did, suck. Full stop. Ah, yes, get a bunch of rowdy fans drunk and loaded up on carbs, attend a function till dusk, and all drive home in bottlenecks of traffic where they rage for a little and honk up a storm.

            There’s a reason the world’s most successful stadiums are basically parking lot-free. So enjoy your cheap copycat of Vegas’s stadium. Mimicking their grandeur is not a win or compliment in my mind. Isn’t that Tesla tube so cool?? Hilarious.

      • Lol, even a top honcho for Barstool Sports posted about this new stadium being a lost cause.

        “We are LOSING RECIPIES. All new stadiums are gonna look the same nd it’s gonna suck.”

        Guess even the sports experts agree with the design amateurs.

  2. Leonard Dzielski | October 2, 2025 at 8:26 am | Reply

    I may be mistaken but I seem to remember reading the city put off paying back the bonds or increased them for a related or different project.

  3. What a boring unimaginative thing to call a stadium. I guess most of the effort is going to this district with dozens of eager fans who can’t wait to live next to their underperforming franchise. Designs oddly get watered down when billionaires aren’t getting tax payer money to fuel their hobbies. Curious.

    Good luck Arlington on their new behemoth for only 10? home games a year. At least they can’t use height ever as a restriction for new development, if that ever was an issue.

    • Why don’t you, Arlington boosters, ask Santa Clara, CA, how much they love their 49ers stadium (Hint: not much). They were sold (and they eagerly bought) a bill of goods.

  4. Can they commit to revise that design? First we are infested with cheap copy and paste apartment buildings all over the city, now we’re getting a worse clone of the Raiders stadium!

  5. I’d gladly pay $15,000 for a season ticket to get those views of Arlington Heights.

  6. If they want to “fully own the building“, I’m assuming that means you’re not gonna ask for any public money. Right?
    Replacing lagoons with parking lots, what a shock. The only building that they’ve promised to build a stadium, so it’s going to look like Woodfield mall if Woodfield Mall retired to Vegas.

    • Except they are requesting public money, “$855 million in public infrastructure funding.” It would be incredibly immoral for the state to pay any public money to the team for this while we have a $775 million CTA budget hole to fill in Chicago and $500 million left to pay off on the updates to Soldier Field. If the Bears want all of the revenue from their game days, then pay for your own stadium, 100%, and stop asking the public to fund your private enterprise.

  7. Steve River North | October 2, 2025 at 8:53 am | Reply

    Ian, fourth paragraph

    “Meanwhile, the city still owes over $500 million from the team’s 2002 reconstruction of Soldier Field.”

    should that be ‘team’ instead of ‘city’ ?

    • Hey Steve, the city is indeed on the line for $500 million by the mid 2030’s for the stadium.

    • No, the city is and should be on the hook cause the only thing the Bears have Soldier Field for is the home games. The City has always owned the stadium and every event held there is money to them and not the Bears. Then they also get a large chunk of money from the Bears as well. Ridiculous to expect the team to pay for the full renovations on a place they only benefit from a handful of times a year.

  8. Soldier Field is already the smallest NFL stadium and they want even less seats in the new stadium? Give me a break.

  9. This is a joke. Going small in the 3rd largest market in the country, and asking for public funding? GTFOH. The Bills going small in Buffalo at least makes some sense with it being such a small market. Any new Bears facility should seat no less than 75,000 so that there would likely be at least some reasonably priced tickets. Tickets are already expensive at Soldier Field; these prices will be insane. We already have Northwestern shutting people out by going small.

    Also, with the NFL increasing games played overseas, how often will there really be 10 home games, particularly 9 regular season home games? With more domes than before, how often would this stadium get a Super Bowl, Wrestlemania, or Final Four? With Nashville building a dome now, too, there’s even more competition. Even with a roof, people don’t want to come north for the Super Bowl in February. That’s why Detroit, Minneapolis and Indy have all only hosted 1 each. Would the new stadium wrestle the Big Ten football championship away from Indy? TBD, but Indy hosts NCAA headquarters which gives them a leg up in getting marquee college events.

    TLDR – This doesn’t deserve a dime of public money, and the argument for it is weaker than ever.

  10. I agree that the public funding request is BS

    Also, why not more seats?

  11. So the billionaire owners of the Chicago Bears want nearly a billion $$ in taxpayer money to move their personal property outside of the city for which the team is named? And the move is necessary because these billionaires are not rich enough and need to make even more money? Of course let’s not forget just few short years ago, in an earlier shakedown of the city and its taxpayers, they saddled the people of Chicago with $500 millions dollars of debt which is still hanging out there.. GTFOH…

    • So all revenue will go straight to the state first to pay off their debt, right? Right??

      They would never pocket our hard work while letting us foot the bill of interest for decades… Or are college kids the only ones subjected to malicious debt?

    • How did The Bears saddle the taxpayers? The Bears don’t own Soldier Field. The City does. The city also gets all the revenus from every event that is held there… The only time the Bears see any money from Soldier Field is when they have a home game. And they have to share that with the city.

      The Bears have wanted to move out of SF for years but the various mayors and politicians keep not letting them. So again…it’s the city that benefits and they shoukd pay for that.

  12. If they are reducing scope and amenities now, the final project will be the stadium surrounded by a huge parking lot. Suburban Arlington Heights is not the city, you can’t build a hotel and entertainment mecca with the lack of density there. It’s not going to be supported by the number of games and some surrounding new housing. This all or nothing attitude will give them nothing. Arlington Heights isn’t the lakefront, there’s better opportunities in Chicago.

  13. Wow…suburban mediocrity at its most stereotypical. Haven’t Bears fans suffered enough?

  14. Did a five-year-old put this together? The seventh picture shows Las Vegas written in the end zone of the outside field. The glass window showcasing the view of Arlington Heights is crazy. I used to live near there, and it is a boring place to be. AH will likely need over $1 billion in infrastructure to accommodate the crowds. The $800 million estimate is a joke. The state should allocate the infrastructure funding to support Metra and the CTA, ensuring these services continue to operate for students and workers who rely on public transportation.

  15. I’m a huge Bears fan but it’s time to allow a 2nd team into this market. Chicago can support one!

    Everything about this plan is a joke. We’re going to have a knockoff of a stadium built for a totally different context. With no retractable roof, no grass field, With less seats than our current “too small” stadium. And surrounded by parking lots and a generic “town centre” that approximates the blandest “new urbanism” trends of the 2000-2005 era.

  16. Manica more like Banica | October 2, 2025 at 2:36 pm | Reply

    Las Vegas Raiders aka Chicago Bears of Arlington Heights
    Dude ripped off his own stadium and made it for the burbs.

  17. The whole plan seems highly mediocre.

    But I will say that if they move we can finally do some re-greening of the Soldier Field area. Tear up those parking lots and plant some trees

  18. This will never happen. Who’s paying the $855,000,000?

  19. Hurricane Ditka | October 2, 2025 at 7:00 pm | Reply

    Lot of complainers on here. The McCaskey family are not typical owners in the NFL. Their only wealth or primary income comes from the Bears. Not owning their own stadium and loosing out on annual revenues for non-football events has severely limited their ability to fork over $6b for a new stadium.

    Soldier Field sucks. An improvement is needed. It’s never going to happen if all the fans complain about having
    to pay more taxes to help fund the teams goals. I would gladly pay a bit more in taxes if it meant I was closer to the team I love, and it meant allowing the team I love to have a brand-new state of the art facility that is more geared toward the fan experience.

    Complaining about it being reminiscent of the Raiders stadium? Would you rather it cost substantially
    more for a unique design and unique construction method? Cmon Man. Leveraging the Allegiant stadium design allows for a more predictable construction schedule with less risks and a lower overall cost. It’s practical.

    Simple fact is Bear fans love to complain about damn near anything, and I don’t see a new stadium (no matter who pays for it) changing that.

    • Taxes are meant to help the public good not go to private sports teams. I do not want my taxes to go to the bears I want it to go to transit or public schools. Insane cope to shill for those poor “billionaire owners” im sure they could leverage debt into building a stadium.

    • Illinois is in poorly governed and in many was at or near insolvency. The last valuation of the Bears was not a market valuation, it was completed to settle the ownership of the estate of a deceased partial owner. There are several multi-billionaires who have expressed interest in buying an NFL team. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, just to name a few. In a true market sale, where buyers can bid to purchase, the Bears go easily sell for $10 billion or more.

      The point being, The Bear’s ownership can issue bonds for the infrastructure and also pay their full tax assessments. If they don’t want to, let them sell the team to someone who has the resources to run it properly. Failing that, I read that NW Indiana has created a sports facility authority. The obviously have their sights on the Bears and White Sox. Let them go.

  20. Is it typical for private investors to pay for infrastructure? If a new housing development is built, does the private company pay for water / sewer lines, electric, and roads? I honestly don’t know.

    The other part the Bears are asking for is better connectivity to 53 and a new metra station. Why would they put that out there and face backlash? If they’re going to pay for the stadium let them build it and then the 53 and metra improvements would come in time just like the state invests in other infrastructure projects for efficiency & safety gains.

    • Private developers have to support a chunk of the infrastructure that connects to their project, but yes, the city is on the hook for the portions that must connect to that site.

      The issue, when you have a city with almost no capacity to support such things like the immense sewer needs, introduction of strain on traffic/movement, ability to provide the power needs; the city needs to take a step back and see if this is a viable option for their community.

      You have to build and prepare and ensure the costs justify the work and if/will they ever recoup the upgrading. You can’t just build whatever in the middle of nowhere. Maybe this site is prepared for such. Maybe this won’t be a strain on the city’s infrastructure. But I wouldn’t foot the bill without having solid data that this won’t be left to taxpayers to help keep the lights on. They’re already asking for tax relief and public money. Now what?

  21. 1) Remember the B10 offices are just down the road in Rosemont. They would probably love having events near their offices.
    2) I will say that a lot of people in Mount Prospect think his would be great

    Nofor
    the Village. I can’t see fans going to Mount Prospect
    before/after one of the 370(!???!!!) events that they are allegedly going to happen.
    Also, the area is mostly residential to the east ➡️ and south of the site. And who is going to pay for a new METRA station? (you know, the guys who are running out of money). Those tracks are currently owned by the Union Pacific RR, who will probably not be happy with freight train delays during construction.
    They will probably also have
    to have longer trains, which means renovating the current stations to be able to handle these longer trains.
    3) Why not look at the 78? The Fire are already putting up a stadium there. And it would have a great view of the Chicago skyline compared to AH.

  22. 80,000 seats appropriate for this site and McCaskey insteads recommits to having the smallest of all of the NFL stadia .

    Stay at Soldier Field , it has more seating than this proposed boondogle. They’re afraid that a larger stadium would lead to empty seats which would lead to more affordable seating prices down the road . Let them build their boondogle without a pennies’worth of taxpayer money. It’s McCaskey’s risk as a private entraneur , not the state of Illinois’.

  23. Doesn’t increased seating greatly increase the cost of the stadium? Are people butt hurt Soldier Field is the smallest NFL stadium from a capacity stand point? Is it ego? Who cares… Why is it trending new NFL stadiums are being built with less capacity than previous stadium generations? Bill’s mafia and Titan’s new stadiums around 60K seats, And the Brown’s and Commander’s new stadiums at 65k.

    Are there examples where a private entity fully paid for and built a new highway interchange and a new transit station?

    If the Bears didn’t ask for any of this to be built and infrastructure remains as is and they paid the $2B+ for the stadium themselves after buying the property, would anyone have an issue with what they’re attempting to do? I’m very curious…

    • Perhaps you’re overlooking the substantial demand for nearly $1 billion in public funds and tax breaks from the state. And that’s hoping infrastructure upgrades will justify the means.

      This is not just a private development covering the cost of a sports field. Look at the Fire if you want a proper public/private partnership. ENOUGH with the pity for billionaire owners.

  24. Bears complain their the smallest stadium in the league, yet will build an even smaller one. make it make sense.

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