The city of Gary has released its official bid to become the new home of the Chicago Bears. Revealed earlier this week, the city, along with state legislators, have brought forth plans for the team to relocate just over the border as Illinois softens its stance on paying for the team’s infrastructure should they stay in the state.
Overall sites map via City of Gary
Gary and Indiana are prepared to provide the team with the tax incentives and funding that Illinois has refused. They have also introduced SB27 to create the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority in order to purchase land, finance improvements, and manage leases for the team. Meanwhile, Arlington Heights has pleaded with Governor Pritzker to move forward with infrastructure funding.
Potential Site A rendering via City of Gary
The proposal also comes as the team continues a successful season, giving it more leverage with officials, even though the Bears remain one of the richest teams in the league. The team will play its next championship game this Sunday outdoors in 10-degree weather. As part of efforts to lure the team, Gary has created a new website, which can be found here.
Potential Site A rendering via City of Gary
According to the site, Gary is proposing three different parcels of varying sizes across the city. The city claims the sites are within a one-hour drive of 7.1 million people, a half-hour drive from the Chicago Loop, see 250,000 vehicles passing through daily on Interstate 80/94, offer access to an airport and rail connections, and could draw fans from three states, including Michigan.
The sites are as follows:
- Gary West End – Located within the Black Oak area, the 400-acre site would replace a large forested area just off Interstate 94. The area is part of what the city is calling an entertainment district, with the Hard Rock Casino located across the street. This is also where the city plans to build a new convention center and hotel, which we covered here.
- Buffington Harbor – The smallest of the three options, this 145-acre site would replace a large retention pond and forested land sandwiched between Lake Michigan and Gary/Chicago International Airport. The city is promoting the site for its waterfront access, with views of some of the largest steel mills in the world located nearby.
- Miller Beach – The largest of the three sites at 760 acres, this waterfront property would combine land owned by U.S. Steel with Lake Street Beach and land that is part of Indiana Dunes National Park. It remains unclear what this would mean for the park. Like the Buffington Harbor site, this location would have access to opportunity zone funding and TIF money.
Site A details via City of Gary
Site B details via City of Gary
Site C details via City of Gary
Potential Site A rendering via City of Gary
Potential Site A rendering via City of Gary
Talks are currently in the early stages, though the team has sent out surveys to gauge interest in an Indiana location and dispatched scouts to review the sites. Along with defining the three properties and releasing a sizzle reel, the city also shared a handful of renderings of what a potential stadium district could look like, seen above. At this time, no further information is available.
Would this make them the… Indiana Bears?
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Bunch of losers. Stop with this garbage.
Site A would never work. Filling that development would be a fruitless effort. Site three presents a the best option imo.
Site 3 – if you think the Chicago Lakefront ordinance is strict, wait until they ask for a chunk of national park land. This is just as likely to happen as tearing down Buckingham Fountain to build a stadium.
Let them have it, one can be a Bears fan and not a fan of their price tag (-: Call the Bears bluff, let them move.
For those not following closely, this post misses some key context — the Bears have already done preliminary site testing on a Hammond site and even brought the NFL Commissioner out for a visit last week. This is Gary trying to jump in the game. And the Bears are loving it.
More importantly, this is all a ploy by the Bears to get Illinois to finance more of their Arlington Heights plan. There is ZERO chance the Bears will move to NW Indiana. But they have to look like they’re dead serious, get the media’s attention, and hope that fans and the public get upset enough to get politicians to take action. If they don’t look serious (drilling, renderings, legislation) it’s going to look pathetic and transparent.
Remember that the Bears are historically tied to Lake Forest. Halas Hall ain’t moving, so Hammond/Gary is in the wrong spot. Their ideal home would be somewhere near downtown but there’s no appetite for the city to pay for this, and nobody at City Hall is clever enough to find a workaround (Rahm might have figured this one out, but BJ isn’t any kind of civic genius).
Architecture and planning amateur hour. The same can be said for the concept proposals for both Arlington Heights and a new stadium immediately south of Soldier Field.
Agree that the ideal location is near downtown, or a properly redesigned Soldier Field scheme. Don’t understand the assumption that if it’s downtown, the city has to solely pay for it. If the state is going to push to keep the Bears in Illinois, there would be incentive to financially support a Chicago site, or by turns, an inferior Arlington Heights location.
Please go wherever you want to. For billionaires to ask any state to for financial assistance is absurd.
To all public officials – to ask individuals to subsidize an extremely profitable team to stay with their tax dollars is a slap in your constituent’s face. Stay strong and stay the course.
If the team was to go to Indiana – let them. Let’s see how many of their fans will follow.
The problem is that unlike other uber-rich team owners who bought teams after making a fortune, the McCaskeys aren’t close to billionaires. I mean I don’t feel sorry for them, but the Bears have been their sole family business for 100 years. The vast majority of their net worth is tied up in the team, and they’ve already been selling off chunks to raise liquid cash.
So truly, they can’t afford to do something really great with a new stadium project. And ultimately that’s a loss for everyone involved as the city and state would benefit from a prestigious, state of the art venue near downtown.
So because they’re not rich enough, and the city/state are mired in debt, nobody gets nice things. We’ll eventually get a cheap bottom-tier dome in Arlington Heights that won’t have the capacity the market deserves, will force the vast majority of attendees to drive and park for events, won’t do anything to boost the city itself, and will be outdated before it opens.
The best answer is “sell the team”