{"id":736230,"date":"2026-07-01T04:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T04:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/736230\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T04:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T04:48:08","slug":"bears-exploring-stay-in-illinois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/736230\/","title":{"rendered":"Bears Exploring Stay In Illinois"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of June, the Bears announced their intention<\/a> to move from Chicago to a new stadium to be built in Hammond, Indiana.<\/p>\n

But that announcement was non-binding, a clear indicator that the franchise has not resolved to leave its longtime home in Illinois. Instead, the team has continued to engage with the state, per Pro Football Talk\u2019s Mike Florio<\/a>, making their Hammond move seem more like leverage than their No. 1 option.<\/p>\n

Illinois has thus far been unwilling to give the Bears key financial incentives to keep them in the state, including a publicly-funded stadium, that Indiana readily offered up. But Illinois\u2019 legislature has considered alternative ways to keep the team in Chicago<\/a>, included a failed attempt to give local municipalities the power to finance, build, and lease a new stadium to the Bears.<\/p>\n

Parts of that bill are still alive. The Bears are attempting to merge multiple pieces of legislation that were proposed earlier this year to find a path to remaining in Illinois, per Christopher Placek of the Daily Herald<\/a>. Governor J.B. Pritzker has offered his assistance in the process and committed to calling a special legislative session should a particular bill be ready for a vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes a bill,\u201d Pritzker said (via Florio<\/a>). \u201cAnd that\u2019s really what we need them to put together are the provisions of a bill. It\u2019s one thing to articulate generally what you want. It\u2019s another thing to actually say we\u2019d like a provision like this, a provision like that. And those are, many of them anyway, already written.\u201d<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s optimistic stance could be further explained by his belief that the Bears\u2019 proposed move to Indiana will not materialize despite their initial announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think we\u2019re actually as close as anybody to getting a stadium done here,\u201d he added. \u201cI don\u2019t think Indiana is a whole heck of a lot closer than we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the situation in Hammond is not static. As part of their due diligence, the Bears are testing soil near the proposed site for a new stadium, per Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times<\/a>. A team statement indicated that this is a different plot of land than the original proposal, but still within the Wolf Lake region in Hammond that they settled on over the last several months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the beginning of June, the Bears announced their intention to move from Chicago to a new stadium…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[8850,349,99],"class_list":["post-736230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-chicago-bears","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}