LAKE FOREST, Ill. \u2014 The\u00a0Chicago Bears\u00a0have at least one viable site for a stadium in northwest Indiana and they are examining a second location as they move closer to finalizing a place for their new home.<\/p>\n
The Bears\u00a0announced in June\u00a0that they were moving forward with a stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana. They have completed their review of what they are calling the Lost Marsh site, and they are doing their due diligence on the Wolf Lake Terminal site. They could merge the two options together in some way.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though we\u2019ve had occasional meetings with the state of Illinois, our sole focus at this point in time is working on a world-class stadium and mixed-use development in Hammond, Indiana,\u201d team President Kevin Warren said Thursday.<\/p>\n
The Bears also had been considering Arlington Heights \u2014 about 30 miles northwest of Chicago \u2014 as a potential location for an enclosed stadium. Wherever they end up, a name change is off the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be the Chicago Bears whether we\u2019re in Arlington or whether we\u2019re in Hammond,\u201d chairman George McCaskey said.<\/p>\n
The Bears, a charter NFL franchise, have played in Illinois since the team\u2019s founding in 1920 as the Decatur Staleys. They moved to Chicago in 1921 and called Wrigley Field home before they started playing at Soldier Field in September 1971.<\/p>\n
The Bears\u2019 lease runs through 2033, but they can pay a fee to break the lease early. Soldier Field is about 40 miles south of Halas Hall \u2014 the team\u2019s headquarters in Lake Forest \u2014 and Hammond is about 20 miles south of the team\u2019s lakefront stadium.<\/p>\n
McCaskey acknowledged the \u201canxiety\u201d of a move to northwest Indiana for the team’s fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut when I\u2019ve driven that route, other than a sign telling me so, I wouldn\u2019t know that I\u2019ve just crossed the state border,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd as Kevin said, once people see the building, once they get in there, once they understand that our top priority from day one was a world-class stadium experience, we think we\u2019ll make that adjustment. We think Bears fans are up for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bears ramped up their focus on Indiana after a proposal to provide financial incentives for the team to build its new home in Illinois stalled in the state legislature. A committee in the Indiana House of Representatives\u00a0passed a bill\u00a0in February that established a Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority to finance, construct and lease a stadium.<\/p>\n
The Illinois Senate\u00a0passed a bill\u00a0that would have cleared the way for Arlington Heights and Chicago to create local stadium authorities, creating a pathway for the Bears to avoid paying property taxes on a new stadium. But the House adjourned without taking up the measure on the last day of the state\u2019s spring legislative session.<\/p>\n
McCaskey said the team has had minimal conversations with Illinois legislators since June. Asked if he was hopeful about Illinois coming up with a plan and building in Arlington Heights, McCaskey demurred.<\/p>\n
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell \u201chas said to us many times in league meetings, \u2018Hope is not a strategy,\u2019\u201d McCaskey said. \u201cWe have to deal with the here and now. We have to deal with real circumstances, and these are the real circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking before McCaskey and Warren held their news conference, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said his office has been in contact with the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working hard to make sure that there\u2019s an opportunity for the Bears to stay in the state of Illinois, whether it\u2019s in Chicago or in Arlington Heights,\u201d Pritzker said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also want, at the same time, to protect the fans and the taxpayers of the state. So we\u2019re going to do everything we can to make sure that that happens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Bears have been pursuing a new home for years, but the process has been hampered by repeated twists and turns.<\/p>\n
The team announced in\u00a0September 2021\u00a0that it had signed a purchase agreement for 326 acres of land in Arlington Heights. The $197 million deal with Churchill Downs Inc. was finalized in 2023.<\/p>\n
In September 2022,\u00a0the team unveiled a nearly $5 billion plan for Arlington Heights that called for an enclosed stadium that could host Super Bowls and Final Fours. The\u00a0conceptual illustrations\u00a0also provided for a year-round entertainment district with restaurants and shopping.<\/p>\n
But the Bears shifted their focus toward building a new stadium next to Soldier Field after Warren was hired as team president in\u00a0January 2023, replacing the retiring Ted Phillips. The plan to transform Chicago\u2019s Museum Campus got an enthusiastic endorsement from Mayor Brandon Johnson and a\u00a0tepid reception from Pritzker\u00a0and state legislators when it was announced in April 2024.<\/p>\n
The team switched gears again in\u00a0Ma<\/a>y 2025<\/a>, announcing it had made \u201csignificant progress\u201d with local leaders in Arlington Heights.<\/p>\n Amid lingering efforts to secure tax incentives in Illinois, along with as much as\u00a0$855 million\u00a0in public money for infrastructure at the Arlington Heights site, the Bears began\u00a0to take a closer look\u00a0at possible options in northwest Indiana.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re in regular, almost daily communication with the state of Indiana working on this,\u201d Warren said. \u201cWe have an excellent deal, a win-win partnership together. And the cost of the significance of this decision from a stadium standpoint, we will make sure that we take our time to get this right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAKE FOREST, Ill. \u2014 The\u00a0Chicago Bears\u00a0have at least one viable site for a stadium in northwest Indiana and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,514,82],"class_list":["post-857141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}