Bear Down, Arlington Bears
September 29, 2021 7:23 AM Subscribe
The Chicago Bears announced their purchase of the former Arlington International Racecourse with the intention of building a new stadium in the city's northwest suburbs.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot considers the announcement a negotiating tactic and says talks to simply renovate Soldier Field remain open. During a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times, Lightfoot said
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot considers the announcement a negotiating tactic and says talks to simply renovate Soldier Field remain open. During a meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times, Lightfoot said
I am a Bears fan. I want the Bears to stay in the city of Chicago. And we are willing to work with them to try to address their concerns. But, I've got to do it in a way that is fiscally prudent and doesn't preclude other uses in that stadium. We are evaluating ways in which we can enhance the fan experience at Soldier Field. … I know that it can be better. I've been to other stadiums across the country where the fan experience is far superior to what we have at Soldier Field.Soldier Field, which is owned by the Chicago Park District, holds 61,500 fans, the smallest capacity in the NFL. The Bears also hope to develop the 326-acre site in Arlington Heights with shopping, dining and entertainment.
Lifelong Chicagoan here. Born and raised in the city, north side. My reaction? The Bears belong in the suburbs.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:28 AM on September 29, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 7:28 AM on September 29, 2021 [8 favorites]
I am not sure what the actual interest level is here in not-yet-definite NFL stadium moves. But, there there are a fair amount of Chicago MeFites in the cabal and it is a matter of civic interest, even if you don't do sports.
A post on the blue has an advantage over sports/news site comments sections in that a person can can avoid hearing about the alternate universe right wing version of Chicago that is a flaming gun battle. That, and folks here likely have more realistic thoughts on the pros/cons of public stadium financing.
*There is no cabal.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:30 AM on September 29, 2021 [8 favorites]
A post on the blue has an advantage over sports/news site comments sections in that a person can can avoid hearing about the alternate universe right wing version of Chicago that is a flaming gun battle. That, and folks here likely have more realistic thoughts on the pros/cons of public stadium financing.
*There is no cabal.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:30 AM on September 29, 2021 [8 favorites]
Also, this news is very timely, being Fat Bear Week and all.
posted by hwyengr at 7:33 AM on September 29, 2021 [11 favorites]
posted by hwyengr at 7:33 AM on September 29, 2021 [11 favorites]
This move should also legally require the Bears to cease their claim on Chicago in their name; the Arlington Heights Bears sounds great!
I'm typing this near the San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, which is 40 miles from San Francisco.
posted by JDC8 at 7:43 AM on September 29, 2021 [9 favorites]
I'm typing this near the San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, which is 40 miles from San Francisco.
posted by JDC8 at 7:43 AM on September 29, 2021 [9 favorites]
I think historic stadiums are nice and teams should strive to stay in them. But, as noted, thanks to the Bears, Soldier Field kind of isn't one anymore.
Call it a cash grab, but strictly from a business standpoint, it makes a ton of sense for Bears ownership to want: more seating capacity; an easier-to-capitalize-on facility that they own and control the income from, instead of share as a tenant (they get nothing from those Chicago Fire games or concerts); and can follow the "entertainment district" model on to further increase revenue. It's fair to be morally or conceptually against any/all of that, but from a dollar and sense standpoint, at least, their logic tracks.
It's a great location for a stadium, right next to the highway, with its own Metra station, and a ton of space. There's actually so much space that they can build a huge stadium, have plenty of parking, all of the commercial crap they would want around it, and still leave lots of green space.
That said, even the part of me that is tentatively okay with this desperately hopes these rich bastards build this themselves. I really don't want to see them sucker the folks of Arlington Heights or Cook County (where I live) into doing it for them. Public stadium financing is a scam.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:44 AM on September 29, 2021 [20 favorites]
Call it a cash grab, but strictly from a business standpoint, it makes a ton of sense for Bears ownership to want: more seating capacity; an easier-to-capitalize-on facility that they own and control the income from, instead of share as a tenant (they get nothing from those Chicago Fire games or concerts); and can follow the "entertainment district" model on to further increase revenue. It's fair to be morally or conceptually against any/all of that, but from a dollar and sense standpoint, at least, their logic tracks.
It's a great location for a stadium, right next to the highway, with its own Metra station, and a ton of space. There's actually so much space that they can build a huge stadium, have plenty of parking, all of the commercial crap they would want around it, and still leave lots of green space.
That said, even the part of me that is tentatively okay with this desperately hopes these rich bastards build this themselves. I really don't want to see them sucker the folks of Arlington Heights or Cook County (where I live) into doing it for them. Public stadium financing is a scam.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:44 AM on September 29, 2021 [20 favorites]
There are several very good paywalled articles about this on The Athletic. I have five 30-day guest passes for that site I've never done anything with. MeMail if you want one.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:50 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:50 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
As someone who lives in the suburbs, not far from Arlington Heights, I'm so freaking pissed about this. I spent four years living on a college campus with a major football program, and that was enough of that nightmare for me. Can't wait for a bunch of drunk assholes to come pouring into the suburbs every weekend, all autumn long, with wildly inadequate public transit options! So many DUIs!
Arlington Heights thinks this is a great idea now, but wait until they get their first post-game riot, and they realize it's not actually that fun to be Ann Arbor on a football weekend. Sleepy bedroom communities looooooooove postgame riots!
And of course I assume the state will hand the Bears a shit-ton of tax breaks to build the new stadium, and I'm already mad about it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:51 AM on September 29, 2021 [13 favorites]
Arlington Heights thinks this is a great idea now, but wait until they get their first post-game riot, and they realize it's not actually that fun to be Ann Arbor on a football weekend. Sleepy bedroom communities looooooooove postgame riots!
And of course I assume the state will hand the Bears a shit-ton of tax breaks to build the new stadium, and I'm already mad about it.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:51 AM on September 29, 2021 [13 favorites]
My friend has a blog on stadium issues; here's his take. TL;DR: it's acquiring leverage to try and pry public money out of Chicago, or the state, or wherever, who cares as long at it's free money from the taxpayer.
posted by Ampersand692 at 7:56 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by Ampersand692 at 7:56 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
Not that I think football fans are inherently violent or drunk or anything, just that having 100,000 fans come into a city of 3 million is a very different thing from having 100,000 fans coming into a town of 75,000. No matter how you slice it, it's going to be a nightmare, and it's going to overwhelm capacity for public safety, for health, for traffic, for restaurants ...
Having lived through that in college, in a college town which has better capacity to absorb large changes in local population, it was still a nightmare If you had to or wanted to do anything but football on the weekend. You couldn't get reservations, you couldn't get pizza delivered, you couldn't get to the grocery store because of the traffic, you couldn't find parking anywhere, there were no hotels available for 60 miles, transit was all effed up ....
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:56 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
Having lived through that in college, in a college town which has better capacity to absorb large changes in local population, it was still a nightmare If you had to or wanted to do anything but football on the weekend. You couldn't get reservations, you couldn't get pizza delivered, you couldn't get to the grocery store because of the traffic, you couldn't find parking anywhere, there were no hotels available for 60 miles, transit was all effed up ....
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:56 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
Not counting financing or anything, is starting from scratch at the Soldier Field location even an option w/r/t tearing down a historic venue or anything like that? It has pretty much all the secondary stuff the Bears would build at a new stadium, just the Bears don't own any of it. Are there any stats on how many people attend Bears games by driving in from the suburbs vs taking an El or even just walking from their luxury condos in the loop?
posted by LionIndex at 7:58 AM on September 29, 2021
posted by LionIndex at 7:58 AM on September 29, 2021
Also I can basically already read all the Next Door posts in my head, 100,000 Bears fans come pouring into a town that's 85% white and has a median household income of $96,000 a year. Definitely nothing can possibly go wrong when an extremely white and wealthy suburb hires literally hundreds of rent-a-cops and off-duty CPD officers, and asks them to come police a bunch of outsiders. There's going to be so much incredibly ugly racism on local social media, and somebody will get shot by a cop the first season.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:02 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:02 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
From The Athletic:
How serious is this step for the Bears?posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:05 AM on September 29, 2021
Adam Jahns, Bears senior writer: Extremely. In years past, the team has used Arlington Park as leverage in its negotiations with the city. But not this time; this time the Bears know they need a home and have the means to make it happen. The NFL landscape has changed too much for the Bears not to be serious about building their own stadium...
What's next?
Jon Greenberg, Chicago senior columnist: ...I'm still not convinced the Bears go through with the move, mostly because of the exorbitant costs and hassle involved in building a new stadium. But it's obvious the Bears are serious about exploring this opportunity. The Bears should've looked to build a new stadium in Chicago decades ago and the unpopular renovations that were finished nearly 20 years ago didn't solve their biggest problem: It's crazy that the third-largest market in the NFL has the smallest stadium capacity...
Eyebrows McGee: I would hazard a guess that most people who attend Bears games at Soldier Field live in the suburbs.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:11 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 8:11 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
When a sports team offers to build their own stadium with their own money; you take that deal before they change their minds.
posted by interogative mood at 8:11 AM on September 29, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 8:11 AM on September 29, 2021 [16 favorites]
The NFL landscape has changed too much for the Bears not to be serious about building their own stadium...
Eh, this is just the PR line for the round-robin continuous con of new stadium building - everyone else has built a new stadium so now we need to build a new stadium. I can understand their desires for capacity and owning a non-football entertainment district from a financial standpoint, but those are the only benefits, and moving loses you one of the most iconic locations in the country.
posted by LionIndex at 8:12 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Eh, this is just the PR line for the round-robin continuous con of new stadium building - everyone else has built a new stadium so now we need to build a new stadium. I can understand their desires for capacity and owning a non-football entertainment district from a financial standpoint, but those are the only benefits, and moving loses you one of the most iconic locations in the country.
posted by LionIndex at 8:12 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
I was in Cincinnati when the vote for the horrible plan for the Bengal’s stadium took place. Earlier in the year, Cleveland lost the Browns to Baltimore (since replaced with an expansion team). I’m convinced that was a too-close-to-home scenario for voters in the Queen City, so we wound up with the worst lease in the NFL.
My advice to Chicago: if they are trying to use this as a threat to get public funding or concessions to stay downtown, LET THEM GO.
posted by MrGuilt at 8:16 AM on September 29, 2021 [14 favorites]
My advice to Chicago: if they are trying to use this as a threat to get public funding or concessions to stay downtown, LET THEM GO.
posted by MrGuilt at 8:16 AM on September 29, 2021 [14 favorites]
For a fairly recent comp, Ampersand's friend's blog Field of Schemes (which is terrific, by the way), has a good piece on the Atlanta baseball team's move from the city to suburban Cobb County and how it didn't really work out for anyone. Except the team, but you guessed that.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:20 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:20 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
Oh, I know they live in the suburbs. But when they're going into the city they're going into a very large city with relatively adequate public transit. When they come into the suburbs, there will be more people in the stadium than live in the suburb itself. And like it may all be suburban people, but it won't all be Arlington Heights people, so they will be outsiders and treated accordingly.
But I really cannot emphasize enough the difference between living in a city and having a big football game or other big event -- It makes some things a little bit more of a hassle, but it doesn't generally shut the entire city down -- and living in a town that is smaller than the stadium it contains, where every event at the stadium shuts down the entire town for 2 days. It's a shitshow. Even when everyone involved behaves like a perfect angel, it's a nightmare. That's just the logistical reality. Don't have an emergency on a football game day, because you're not getting any help. They will literally have to add extra cardiac crash teams to the local hospitals on game days, because do you know how many people have heart attacks at your average football game?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:21 AM on September 29, 2021 [10 favorites]
But I really cannot emphasize enough the difference between living in a city and having a big football game or other big event -- It makes some things a little bit more of a hassle, but it doesn't generally shut the entire city down -- and living in a town that is smaller than the stadium it contains, where every event at the stadium shuts down the entire town for 2 days. It's a shitshow. Even when everyone involved behaves like a perfect angel, it's a nightmare. That's just the logistical reality. Don't have an emergency on a football game day, because you're not getting any help. They will literally have to add extra cardiac crash teams to the local hospitals on game days, because do you know how many people have heart attacks at your average football game?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:21 AM on September 29, 2021 [10 favorites]
I can understand their desires for capacity and owning a non-football entertainment district from a financial standpoint, but those are the only benefits
Typically, teams would say that making a ton of additional money is a sufficient benefit. I don't mean that as snark. I'm saying they're really that single-minded, so much so that it's probably something we can treat as a given.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:26 AM on September 29, 2021
Typically, teams would say that making a ton of additional money is a sufficient benefit. I don't mean that as snark. I'm saying they're really that single-minded, so much so that it's probably something we can treat as a given.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:26 AM on September 29, 2021
As someone who actually lives near the current stadium location, I feel like the riot panic is perhaps a bit hasty here. I mean, yes, the city of Chicago is larger than Arlington Heights and there is more* public transit here but a bunch of drunk assholes piled into Arlington Park every weekend too for decades. I mean I guess they were rich drunk assholes so the rich assholes in Arlington Heights didn't care? (I grew up there as a loathèd poor, lol, I'm allowed to call them rich assholes.)
*but like, NOT REALLY, my dudes--getting to Soldier Field exclusively by mass transit is a surprisingly tricky proposition, involving several transfers and a solid hoofing-it stretch unless you happen to live directly downtown. NOBODY from the suburbs is taking mass transit to Soldier Field, they are all driving drunk as fuck around my city.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:27 AM on September 29, 2021 [11 favorites]
*but like, NOT REALLY, my dudes--getting to Soldier Field exclusively by mass transit is a surprisingly tricky proposition, involving several transfers and a solid hoofing-it stretch unless you happen to live directly downtown. NOBODY from the suburbs is taking mass transit to Soldier Field, they are all driving drunk as fuck around my city.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:27 AM on September 29, 2021 [11 favorites]
As someone who lives in the suburbs, not far from Arlington Heights, I'm so freaking pissed about this.As someone in the part of town where people currently party before and after games and who regularly takes a bus through stadium traffic. . . I genuinely sympathize. Perhaps not quite enough to argue against the move, for selfish reasons.
(I absolutely accept that big sporting events make lots of people happy and are probably worth putting up with in the interest of creating a world everyone enjoys. But, every time there's a home game, I can't help but imagine the riots that would happen if football fans were treated anywhere near the way protestors are treated in this city.)
posted by eotvos at 8:29 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Typically, teams would say that making a ton of additional money is a sufficient benefit.
Oh, yeah, I'm an ex-Charger fan, so I get it. I'm just wondering how much of a soul the ownership has; like how much of their own history is important to them. So far, the Chargers' move has backfired on them.
posted by LionIndex at 8:30 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Oh, yeah, I'm an ex-Charger fan, so I get it. I'm just wondering how much of a soul the ownership has; like how much of their own history is important to them. So far, the Chargers' move has backfired on them.
posted by LionIndex at 8:30 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Can't wait for the bleary-eyed Durty Nellie's shuttle from Palatine to this new stadium! It'll be a failure pile in a sadness bus.
I'd be fine with the move if it meant that Solider Field gets de-renovated. It doesn't have to look exactly like it did before the spaceship landed inside its columns, but I think reverting it to a less ostentatious stadium that seats 40-45,000 folks would be the better fit.
posted by stannate at 8:35 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'd be fine with the move if it meant that Solider Field gets de-renovated. It doesn't have to look exactly like it did before the spaceship landed inside its columns, but I think reverting it to a less ostentatious stadium that seats 40-45,000 folks would be the better fit.
posted by stannate at 8:35 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
Yeah, like, to be clear, I don't think Bears fans are rioting every weekend. But I also lived in a college football town, and sooner or later, someone's going to flip a car and light it on fire because they're excited about sports. And wait until you see how the wealthy homeowners in Arlington Heights react to cars getting flipped, lost drunk people at 2:00 a.m. shouting on residential streets, and all those other sorts of things. If you live in a college football town, you're just kind of resigned to it. I can't see the homeowners of Arlington Heights being resigned to it.
(I really, honestly do think that someone will get shot by a cop in the first season in Arlington Heights, because I think they're going to be under trained or over tired, depending on whether they're rent-a-cops or off-duty CPD, and I think local leadership is going to be way too aggressive about policing. And I think there are going to be big, giant racial components to how they handle their local policing for Bears games. And I mean, the CPD is very racist. But I think that's going to be kicked up several distressing notches in Arlington Heights.)
Also the race track was skeezy AF by the 1980s, but its capacity was only 35,000, and it's been like 25 years since an event that big happened at the racetrack. The Bears would just be on such a different scale.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:41 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
(I really, honestly do think that someone will get shot by a cop in the first season in Arlington Heights, because I think they're going to be under trained or over tired, depending on whether they're rent-a-cops or off-duty CPD, and I think local leadership is going to be way too aggressive about policing. And I think there are going to be big, giant racial components to how they handle their local policing for Bears games. And I mean, the CPD is very racist. But I think that's going to be kicked up several distressing notches in Arlington Heights.)
Also the race track was skeezy AF by the 1980s, but its capacity was only 35,000, and it's been like 25 years since an event that big happened at the racetrack. The Bears would just be on such a different scale.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:41 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
I don't know what local government is like in Illinois, but I imagine this is also a way of establishing themselves as an enormous fish in a very small pond. I hope people who live in Arlington Heights enjoy what little self-government they'll have left after a proverbial 800lb gorilla of regional tax revenue comes to town because from here on out the Bears will have an effective veto of whatever happens by dint of being such a large stakeholder and economic driver. I'm sure the people in Foxboro, Massachusetts enjoy having to keep the Patriots satisfied.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:46 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:46 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
As another person from the San Diego perspective, the landscape on public subsidies for NFL stadium construction is very different than it was even 5 or 10 years ago. That, combined with the historic nature of the existing stadium, makes me feel like this is not a bluff but is a likely outcome. Team owners have largely exhausted the supply of urban rubes and are looking farther afield. Given that the NFL has a capacity and frequency that makes it a pretty bad match for urban stadiums, this might be good for Chicago - you can get more life in today’s world with a smaller arena supporting events, exhibitions, and a sport with more games and smaller crowds.
posted by q*ben at 8:50 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 8:50 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm typing this near the San Francisco 49ers stadium in Santa Clara, which is 40 miles from San Francisco.
A twitter thread:
A twitter thread:
NBC keeps showing downtown San Francisco, but the 49ers stadium is 40+ miles away. Is there another stadium so far from the city the team is named after? I thought the Giants/Jets, but their New Jersey stadium is only 9 miles from Midtown Manhattan.posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 8:50 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
-@compujeramey
JDC8: "This move should also legally require the Bears to cease their claim on Chicago in their name; the Arlington Heights Bears sounds great!"
I recall when the Cubs were threatening to move out to Addison. The city's official response was something like "great, but you can't call yourselves the Chicago Cubs anymore."
I'm originally from Chicago and my folks live in the northwest suburbs now. My mom enjoyed going to the racetrack sometimes. I'm curious how many people would show up for a typical day at the races vs the number at a football game (and I know there were other attractions at Arlington Park). It's not like this is a greenfield development—Arlington Heights would be accustomed to some number of visitors already.
My hope is that no state or local officials offer the Bears a nickel to stay or move. Lori Lightfoot, at least, seems pretty hard-nosed.
posted by adamrice at 8:53 AM on September 29, 2021
I recall when the Cubs were threatening to move out to Addison. The city's official response was something like "great, but you can't call yourselves the Chicago Cubs anymore."
I'm originally from Chicago and my folks live in the northwest suburbs now. My mom enjoyed going to the racetrack sometimes. I'm curious how many people would show up for a typical day at the races vs the number at a football game (and I know there were other attractions at Arlington Park). It's not like this is a greenfield development—Arlington Heights would be accustomed to some number of visitors already.
My hope is that no state or local officials offer the Bears a nickel to stay or move. Lori Lightfoot, at least, seems pretty hard-nosed.
posted by adamrice at 8:53 AM on September 29, 2021
Stolen from Twitter user @cubbymemes: At 47 yards per week, it will take the Bears 60 years to get to Arlington Heights.
But seriously, I don’t think it’s obvious whether all of the proposed entertainment complex uses will work from a feasibility perspective, given current commercial real estate trends and how much square footage, hotel rooms, etc. already exist nearby, e.g., Schaumburg.
posted by carmicha at 8:55 AM on September 29, 2021 [16 favorites]
But seriously, I don’t think it’s obvious whether all of the proposed entertainment complex uses will work from a feasibility perspective, given current commercial real estate trends and how much square footage, hotel rooms, etc. already exist nearby, e.g., Schaumburg.
posted by carmicha at 8:55 AM on September 29, 2021 [16 favorites]
sooner or later, someone's going to flip a car and light it on fire because they're excited about sports.
LOL just imagining all of the Bears fans in my life reading this and trying to remember the last time the Bears did anything worth car-flipping.
College football and NFL football...they're wildly different things. The fanbase is different, the schedules are different, the whole thing. Living in a college town with Big College Football just isn't actually a good analog for a regular town with an NFL team.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:56 AM on September 29, 2021 [9 favorites]
LOL just imagining all of the Bears fans in my life reading this and trying to remember the last time the Bears did anything worth car-flipping.
College football and NFL football...they're wildly different things. The fanbase is different, the schedules are different, the whole thing. Living in a college town with Big College Football just isn't actually a good analog for a regular town with an NFL team.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:56 AM on September 29, 2021 [9 favorites]
I think it may be worth noting that Arlington Park is on the western boundary of Arlington Heights, and that this proposed Bears complex will be much closer to the town of Rolling Meadows, which is significantly less affluent than Arlington Heights. If any area is going to bear the brunt of this development, its the residents of Rolling Meadows.
I'm curious how many people would show up for a typical day at the races vs the number at a football game (and I know there were other attractions at Arlington Park). It's not like this is a greenfield development—Arlington Heights would be accustomed to some number of visitors already.
I grew up in Arlington Heights and the traffic on race days was hardly noticeable. My dad, however, who also grew up in Arlington Heights says that back in the 60's (when horse racing was actually popular) the traffic was abysmal. There's no way the AH or RM public safety services are currently capable of handling something this big.
posted by Hey Dean Yeager! at 8:57 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm curious how many people would show up for a typical day at the races vs the number at a football game (and I know there were other attractions at Arlington Park). It's not like this is a greenfield development—Arlington Heights would be accustomed to some number of visitors already.
I grew up in Arlington Heights and the traffic on race days was hardly noticeable. My dad, however, who also grew up in Arlington Heights says that back in the 60's (when horse racing was actually popular) the traffic was abysmal. There's no way the AH or RM public safety services are currently capable of handling something this big.
posted by Hey Dean Yeager! at 8:57 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
I was rereading the case study the other day about how Oklahoma City made a major push to get a major sports franchise after losing out on a big company’s expansion because the executives didn’t see how they could possibly live there. This is actually pretty horrifying — that cities should need to major expenditures of public funds to subsidize billionaires and their sports team so that the wealthy will be entertained enough to consider the labor force worthy exploiting for their profits.
posted by interogative mood at 8:59 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 8:59 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm curious how many people would show up for a typical day at the races
As Eyebrows pointed out, capacity was 35,000 but it's been years since very big events that would max that out were happening there. I'm fairly sure it has been years since it got money from big crowds, and that it leaned heavier on luxury boxes/private parties in its latter years. I went to a work event there once, and the boxes were mostly full and the grandstand seats maybe half full, maybe less.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:59 AM on September 29, 2021
As Eyebrows pointed out, capacity was 35,000 but it's been years since very big events that would max that out were happening there. I'm fairly sure it has been years since it got money from big crowds, and that it leaned heavier on luxury boxes/private parties in its latter years. I went to a work event there once, and the boxes were mostly full and the grandstand seats maybe half full, maybe less.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:59 AM on September 29, 2021
How often have the Bears even sold out their dinky existing stadium? I remember it was news that they came CLOSE to selling out a preseason game, but apart from that...what, 2018 in the playoffs was probably the last time? I guess if you build it they could come, but a full 100,000 for every game seems far from guaranteed.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2021
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2021
"This move should also legally require the Bears to cease their claim on Chicago in their name; the Arlington Heights Bears sounds great!"
Given the incidence of people from Arlington Heights claiming to be from Chicago (WHICH THEY ARE NOT) I presume the Bears will continue to do the same, should this move happen.
posted by merriment at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
Given the incidence of people from Arlington Heights claiming to be from Chicago (WHICH THEY ARE NOT) I presume the Bears will continue to do the same, should this move happen.
posted by merriment at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
The Bears are looking at the Cubs. The Cubs have been allowed so many adjacent properties to, in my thinking, make up for the small ballpark size (because of it's historical registry status). They bought the team understanding those facts. They started throwing around money in support of what they wanted. Bought the apartment buildings that had built rooftop decks, built a hotel, built an outdoor eating area, parking, etc. Those different elements are separate revenue streams.
Now, the Bears cannot develop the Chicago Park District land. They could have worked in partnership to develop the land (parking and other amenities) if they would have paid. My guess is that they didn't want to do it. Too heavy a lift. Too much a political gamble.
They are leaving and will build a stadium and then have their revenue stream of parking, restaurants, hotels and gambling. They will make a fortune. Arlington Heights groups should be organizing to make sure that they have a seat at the table now. There will be a lot of money sloshing around and people making decisions that will not be undone for a long time.
Chicago should petition the NFL for a 2nd Team in the meanwhile.
posted by zerobyproxy at 9:11 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Now, the Bears cannot develop the Chicago Park District land. They could have worked in partnership to develop the land (parking and other amenities) if they would have paid. My guess is that they didn't want to do it. Too heavy a lift. Too much a political gamble.
They are leaving and will build a stadium and then have their revenue stream of parking, restaurants, hotels and gambling. They will make a fortune. Arlington Heights groups should be organizing to make sure that they have a seat at the table now. There will be a lot of money sloshing around and people making decisions that will not be undone for a long time.
Chicago should petition the NFL for a 2nd Team in the meanwhile.
posted by zerobyproxy at 9:11 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
How often have the Bears even sold out their dinky existing stadium?
I checked 2019, and they sell out at capacity regularly and are #25 in attendance, but top 10 is only 10k extra people in average attendance, so they don't have to make the stadium much bigger.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:12 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
I checked 2019, and they sell out at capacity regularly and are #25 in attendance, but top 10 is only 10k extra people in average attendance, so they don't have to make the stadium much bigger.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:12 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Given the incidence of people from Arlington Heights claiming to be from Chicago (WHICH THEY ARE NOT) I presume the Bears will continue to do the same, should this move happen.
The best bit on the series Ozark is that the family consistently describes themselves as being from Chicago, when they are shown to be from Naperville, 30+ miles away.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:14 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
The best bit on the series Ozark is that the family consistently describes themselves as being from Chicago, when they are shown to be from Naperville, 30+ miles away.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:14 AM on September 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
How often have the Bears even sold out their dinky existing stadium? I remember it was news that they came CLOSE to selling out a preseason game, but apart from that...what, 2018 in the playoffs was probably the last time? I guess if you build it they could come, but a full 100,000 for every game seems far from guaranteed.
The Bears will sell out. The wait list for season tickets is years long. This is a team that has been around for over a hundred years and fans have been known to take over visiting stadiums. I doubt they'd be aiming for a 100,000 stadium but one with 20K more seats.
posted by Constance Mirabella at 9:19 AM on September 29, 2021
The Bears will sell out. The wait list for season tickets is years long. This is a team that has been around for over a hundred years and fans have been known to take over visiting stadiums. I doubt they'd be aiming for a 100,000 stadium but one with 20K more seats.
posted by Constance Mirabella at 9:19 AM on September 29, 2021
I don't care about football, but as a racing fan, it's sad to see any track go. The Arlington Million was a major deal back in the day when millions weren't being offered as purses. I'm not sure what this move says about Churchill Downs' vision.
posted by sardonyx at 9:23 AM on September 29, 2021
posted by sardonyx at 9:23 AM on September 29, 2021
Expanding the capacity isn't even strictly about expanding the total number of butts that can fit into seats. It's about expanding inventory of seats, which sell at different rates and are not created equal.
New seats won't all come in behind the back rows. Depending on how the eventual stadium is configured, the Bears may gain more opportunity to sell mid-price tickets or luxury box seats, which are higher profit.
Although, even an increase in $70 "cheap seats" may help, as people in the suburbs might be more inclined to attend on a whim if there are still less expensive tickets available. And those people still buy beers, pizza, hats, jerseys, etc.
It's not just about getting the most people into the building. It's also about having the best assortment of seats to sell to maximize profit even if you're not selling out.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:23 AM on September 29, 2021
New seats won't all come in behind the back rows. Depending on how the eventual stadium is configured, the Bears may gain more opportunity to sell mid-price tickets or luxury box seats, which are higher profit.
Although, even an increase in $70 "cheap seats" may help, as people in the suburbs might be more inclined to attend on a whim if there are still less expensive tickets available. And those people still buy beers, pizza, hats, jerseys, etc.
It's not just about getting the most people into the building. It's also about having the best assortment of seats to sell to maximize profit even if you're not selling out.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:23 AM on September 29, 2021
I'm not sure what this move says about Churchill Downs' vision.
Their vision is that they don't want any competition for the casino they own, 10 miles away.
posted by hwyengr at 9:25 AM on September 29, 2021
Their vision is that they don't want any competition for the casino they own, 10 miles away.
posted by hwyengr at 9:25 AM on September 29, 2021
I don't see how equating college football with pro football makes any sense here.
posted by cooker girl at 9:32 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by cooker girl at 9:32 AM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
Oh, I get that. It just seems that CDI is selling off everything that isn't in Kentucky. I thought most of the big players wanted to expand their reach, not shrink it.
posted by sardonyx at 9:34 AM on September 29, 2021
posted by sardonyx at 9:34 AM on September 29, 2021
Re: do the Bears sell out at Soldier Field... This ESPN chart says in 2019 (their last completed, non-pandemic season) the Bears sold 100.7% of their home game seats. Somewhat hilariously, this was third behind San Francisco (102.6%) and LA (117.6%!)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:35 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:35 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
My dad, however, who also grew up in Arlington Heights says that back in the 60's (when horse racing was actually popular) the traffic was abysmal
Up until recently the Million was the only event that drew a real crowd anymore and the traffic would back up on Route 53 for miles prior to the start. I can't imagine what 53 will look like if you tripled that amount of cars. It would probably back feed all the way to the I-90 exit.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:40 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
Up until recently the Million was the only event that drew a real crowd anymore and the traffic would back up on Route 53 for miles prior to the start. I can't imagine what 53 will look like if you tripled that amount of cars. It would probably back feed all the way to the I-90 exit.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:40 AM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
"I can't imagine what 53 will look like if you tripled that amount of cars. It would probably back feed all the way to the I-90 exit."
And given that Chicago is already in a crisis situation for freight transit and is starting to be a major bottleneck for domestic freight, you can bet your sweet bippy that we'll all get to pay for new roads. The stadium plan will come with upgrades to in-town roads, but there's not going to be a state or federal traffic assessment included, and officials will all make a *surprised pikachu* face when trucks start stacking up on Chicago expressways during the holiday shipping season because I-53 and I-90 are slammed with stadium traffic every weekend, only 16 miles from O'Hare. It's not just going to back up to I-90; it's going to lock up the Tri-State.
The state and feds have spent something in the neighborhood of $4 billion in the last 10 years to reduce freight train transit times through the Chicago area from 40 hours to ~26 hours. (Part of the reason it's so slow is because there are SO MANY LEVEL CROSSINGS.) Arlington Heights has 10 at-grade crossings, which are so dangerous and slow down freight transit so much that the federal DOT specifically studied Arlington Heights's crossings seeking improvements. Enough freight goes through there that it's a three-line rail route; it's the cross-continent link for Union Pacific. Do we just ... shut down one of the nation's class I freight rail lines on game days? Rebuild every level crossing in Arlington Heights?
So just, like, mentally add all those tax dollars to whatever incentives the Bears get to build their new stadium.
"I'm not sure what this move says about Churchill Downs' vision."
Their behavior has been so shady throughout the process that there are multiple investigations. Indictments are probably too much to hope for, but they were basically lying liars who lied throughout their whole acquisition and then dumping of the racetrack, and everybody knew it.
(Also, I was comparing college and pro because of the issues caused by the population surge into a small town -- some of which are actually considerably more intense for pro games because of the older fanbase. Like, hospital capacity, EMTs, medical professionals needed to service a pro stadium are higher than an equivalently-sized college stadium -- I have a good friend who does medical support stuff for football games, concerts, etc. and has to do math like, "How many EMTs do we need in the stadium for a Rolling Stones concert vs. a Phish concert vs. a Bears game vs. an Illini game?" The suburbs are also not amazing at supporting seasonal entertainment districts, and (having seen some of the earlier studies/proposals for the racetrack redevelopment) I have big questions about whether this financially benefits anybody but the Bears or whether this drives half the restaurants etc. in the area out of business.)
Can we not just put a huge pot farm there, and call it a day? Sorry, I'm just mad because of how much this whole fiasco is going to cost everybody but the Bears, but that'll all be handwaved away and we'll all act like we didn't knowwwwwwwwwww that putting an NFL stadium literally on the UP line would create chaos in freight rail shipping. Imma still be mad if they actually stay in Chicago and manage to wring a bunch of money out of the city and state for it. I'm just going to sit here being mad about capitalism, basically. Capitalism and Matt Nagy's terrible offensive playcalling.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:34 AM on September 29, 2021 [10 favorites]
And given that Chicago is already in a crisis situation for freight transit and is starting to be a major bottleneck for domestic freight, you can bet your sweet bippy that we'll all get to pay for new roads. The stadium plan will come with upgrades to in-town roads, but there's not going to be a state or federal traffic assessment included, and officials will all make a *surprised pikachu* face when trucks start stacking up on Chicago expressways during the holiday shipping season because I-53 and I-90 are slammed with stadium traffic every weekend, only 16 miles from O'Hare. It's not just going to back up to I-90; it's going to lock up the Tri-State.
The state and feds have spent something in the neighborhood of $4 billion in the last 10 years to reduce freight train transit times through the Chicago area from 40 hours to ~26 hours. (Part of the reason it's so slow is because there are SO MANY LEVEL CROSSINGS.) Arlington Heights has 10 at-grade crossings, which are so dangerous and slow down freight transit so much that the federal DOT specifically studied Arlington Heights's crossings seeking improvements. Enough freight goes through there that it's a three-line rail route; it's the cross-continent link for Union Pacific. Do we just ... shut down one of the nation's class I freight rail lines on game days? Rebuild every level crossing in Arlington Heights?
So just, like, mentally add all those tax dollars to whatever incentives the Bears get to build their new stadium.
"I'm not sure what this move says about Churchill Downs' vision."
Their behavior has been so shady throughout the process that there are multiple investigations. Indictments are probably too much to hope for, but they were basically lying liars who lied throughout their whole acquisition and then dumping of the racetrack, and everybody knew it.
(Also, I was comparing college and pro because of the issues caused by the population surge into a small town -- some of which are actually considerably more intense for pro games because of the older fanbase. Like, hospital capacity, EMTs, medical professionals needed to service a pro stadium are higher than an equivalently-sized college stadium -- I have a good friend who does medical support stuff for football games, concerts, etc. and has to do math like, "How many EMTs do we need in the stadium for a Rolling Stones concert vs. a Phish concert vs. a Bears game vs. an Illini game?" The suburbs are also not amazing at supporting seasonal entertainment districts, and (having seen some of the earlier studies/proposals for the racetrack redevelopment) I have big questions about whether this financially benefits anybody but the Bears or whether this drives half the restaurants etc. in the area out of business.)
Can we not just put a huge pot farm there, and call it a day? Sorry, I'm just mad because of how much this whole fiasco is going to cost everybody but the Bears, but that'll all be handwaved away and we'll all act like we didn't knowwwwwwwwwww that putting an NFL stadium literally on the UP line would create chaos in freight rail shipping. Imma still be mad if they actually stay in Chicago and manage to wring a bunch of money out of the city and state for it. I'm just going to sit here being mad about capitalism, basically. Capitalism and Matt Nagy's terrible offensive playcalling.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:34 AM on September 29, 2021 [10 favorites]
but how fat are they?
posted by thelonius at 10:50 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 10:50 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
i'm struggling to see the downside of the bears leaving chicago to fuck off somewhere else?
1. it'll crater lightfoot's approval rating even lower than its current abyssal level, happily making it ever more likely that cop-lover will be a one-termer
2. the racist, violent, awful nfl won't be in chicago proper anymore
3. chicago, with its massive budgetary problems, won't be on the hook for some useless, pointless, taxpayer theft-of-a-stadium
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:20 AM on September 29, 2021
1. it'll crater lightfoot's approval rating even lower than its current abyssal level, happily making it ever more likely that cop-lover will be a one-termer
2. the racist, violent, awful nfl won't be in chicago proper anymore
3. chicago, with its massive budgetary problems, won't be on the hook for some useless, pointless, taxpayer theft-of-a-stadium
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:20 AM on September 29, 2021
I grew up and still occasionally work a bit farther out (Barrington), and 53 is frequently stop-and-go past the nearest ramp to Arlington on weeknights. Euclid and Northwest Highway are both two lanes, but are frequently jammed from Metra delays. All of that will be compounded without massive infrastructure investment, and who exactly will pay for that?
The dream of an entertainment complex around the stadium is wishful thinking. A Bears game might support a new hotel (though there's one a quarter mile away) and maybe a couple of restaurants, but it'll be a ghost town most of the other 40 weeks of the year. What could a new development offer that isn't already available in Schaumburg or Rosemont (which already aggressively market themselves and would surely have a jump on the newcomer) or any number of other suburbs, not to mention Chicago itself? Hell, Wrigleyville is empty half the year — but those places get by because of the density of the city around them.
A friend on Twitter said a dome would get more events, but it'll hardly be the only one. Allstate Arena is a few miles in one direction, busy with concerts and two smaller sports teams. NOW Arena (fka Sears Center) is a few miles in the other; when's the last time you heard about anything happening out there?
posted by me3dia at 11:26 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
The dream of an entertainment complex around the stadium is wishful thinking. A Bears game might support a new hotel (though there's one a quarter mile away) and maybe a couple of restaurants, but it'll be a ghost town most of the other 40 weeks of the year. What could a new development offer that isn't already available in Schaumburg or Rosemont (which already aggressively market themselves and would surely have a jump on the newcomer) or any number of other suburbs, not to mention Chicago itself? Hell, Wrigleyville is empty half the year — but those places get by because of the density of the city around them.
A friend on Twitter said a dome would get more events, but it'll hardly be the only one. Allstate Arena is a few miles in one direction, busy with concerts and two smaller sports teams. NOW Arena (fka Sears Center) is a few miles in the other; when's the last time you heard about anything happening out there?
posted by me3dia at 11:26 AM on September 29, 2021 [5 favorites]
NOW Arena (fka Sears Center) is a few miles in the other; when's the last time you heard about anything happening out there?
well, now that aew has sold out the united center, they probably won't be going back all that often, so...
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:28 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
well, now that aew has sold out the united center, they probably won't be going back all that often, so...
posted by i used to be someone else at 11:28 AM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Weighing in from the South Suburbs and Arlington Heights is, uh, not close.
posted by Hop123 at 12:16 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Hop123 at 12:16 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
This move should also legally require the Bears to cease their claim on Chicago in their name; the Arlington Heights Bears sounds great!
I agree and wonder if this can be done. The NY Giants and Jets seem more like New Jersey teams, but their current names stick.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:40 PM on September 29, 2021
I agree and wonder if this can be done. The NY Giants and Jets seem more like New Jersey teams, but their current names stick.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:40 PM on September 29, 2021
I'm all for them renaming themselves The "i'm From Chicago" Bears - in keeping with the number of suburbanites who say it (mostly out of convenience), and 'native Chicagoans'' perpetual disdain for anyone not born within the city limits laying claim to such.
As a 20-year resident of city (from the burbs, if you please) - I don't really feel one way or the other about the Bears moving. My family had Bears season tickets from 1998 to 2014ish, but as more news and studies come out about CTE, I just can't bring myself to watch football anymore.
posted by onehalfjunco at 1:42 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
As a 20-year resident of city (from the burbs, if you please) - I don't really feel one way or the other about the Bears moving. My family had Bears season tickets from 1998 to 2014ish, but as more news and studies come out about CTE, I just can't bring myself to watch football anymore.
posted by onehalfjunco at 1:42 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
The thing about a football stadium, is that it's *expensive* to build, with a limited financial upside. After all, it's only used a handful of times a year. Allegiant Stadium was $1.9 billion, with a huge chunk of that ($750m, I'm seeing) coming from the public. I don't know much about Chicago, but I do know enough about suburban NIMBYism to know that Arlington Heights is not going to pay $750m for a football stadium that will cause masses of people driving into the suburb ten weekends. And for what -- the prestige of having a stadium? No way.
SoFi Stadium, on the other hand, was privately funded. Its price tag was over $5b, which actually shows you that Stan Kroenke did NOT build a football stadium. He built a massive mixed use residential-office-commercial complex -- on the last big urban plot of land available near the the Pacific Ocean -- with a football stadium attached.
So if the Bears want to build a football stadium, and they can't get local governments to pay for it, what's their plan -- build a huge mixed used facility in the Chicago suburbs? Look, I don't know Chicago, but I think the NIMBYs would like that *less*. Stop Manhattanizing Arlington Heights, they yell (as the proposal is watered down to a neighborhood of townhomes).
I agree with the other posters that think this is first and foremost about leverage.
posted by lewedswiver at 2:30 PM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
SoFi Stadium, on the other hand, was privately funded. Its price tag was over $5b, which actually shows you that Stan Kroenke did NOT build a football stadium. He built a massive mixed use residential-office-commercial complex -- on the last big urban plot of land available near the the Pacific Ocean -- with a football stadium attached.
So if the Bears want to build a football stadium, and they can't get local governments to pay for it, what's their plan -- build a huge mixed used facility in the Chicago suburbs? Look, I don't know Chicago, but I think the NIMBYs would like that *less*. Stop Manhattanizing Arlington Heights, they yell (as the proposal is watered down to a neighborhood of townhomes).
I agree with the other posters that think this is first and foremost about leverage.
posted by lewedswiver at 2:30 PM on September 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
I spent a good chunk of high school and college driving in and around Arlington, and oh, Jesus, that’s like taking the worst nightmare possible and adding a layer of venomous spiders to everything.
As much as I’d love to see the city and the state tell the bears to screw (and I’ve been a fan since young Ghidorah fell in love with the Super Bowl Bears, and have waited from then til now for them to be anything other than embarrassing), it’s just not how things seem to ever go. They’ll get massive amounts of funding and tax breaks because that’s how this game goes. The best thing I’ve seen is a joke about the Arlington Bears going 7-10 (again) while the Chicago Jaguars win the super bowl.
The only thing that gives me any hope is that, having agreed to purchase the Arlington site, they (in typical Bears fashion) have shot themselves in the foot by taking away the most powerful ploy in negotiations like these: saying you’ll move to a different city if you don’t get money. Everyone already knows where they’ll be going, and it’s not like anyone has incentive to help them out now. It’s the equivalent of 3rd and 2, and committing a false start, getting knocked back to 3rd and 7, and throwing a pass that travels three yards, then punti… sorry, if you’re a bears fan, I’ve probably just given you unpleasant flashbacks to the last fifteen years.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:12 PM on September 29, 2021 [6 favorites]
As much as I’d love to see the city and the state tell the bears to screw (and I’ve been a fan since young Ghidorah fell in love with the Super Bowl Bears, and have waited from then til now for them to be anything other than embarrassing), it’s just not how things seem to ever go. They’ll get massive amounts of funding and tax breaks because that’s how this game goes. The best thing I’ve seen is a joke about the Arlington Bears going 7-10 (again) while the Chicago Jaguars win the super bowl.
The only thing that gives me any hope is that, having agreed to purchase the Arlington site, they (in typical Bears fashion) have shot themselves in the foot by taking away the most powerful ploy in negotiations like these: saying you’ll move to a different city if you don’t get money. Everyone already knows where they’ll be going, and it’s not like anyone has incentive to help them out now. It’s the equivalent of 3rd and 2, and committing a false start, getting knocked back to 3rd and 7, and throwing a pass that travels three yards, then punti… sorry, if you’re a bears fan, I’ve probably just given you unpleasant flashbacks to the last fifteen years.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:12 PM on September 29, 2021 [6 favorites]
I know a person who claimed to be “from Chicago” even though they actually lived and worked in Peoria.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:12 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:12 PM on September 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
The Arlington Shuffle
We are the Bears' shakedown crew
Doubling down on grifting you
We're so bad, our plan's no good
It'll bring traffic to your neighborhood
Our ancient owner wants to sell
To raise the price we'll build hotels
We're not here to feathers ruffle
We're just here to do the real estate hustle.
posted by carmicha at 8:13 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
We are the Bears' shakedown crew
Doubling down on grifting you
We're so bad, our plan's no good
It'll bring traffic to your neighborhood
Our ancient owner wants to sell
To raise the price we'll build hotels
We're not here to feathers ruffle
We're just here to do the real estate hustle.
posted by carmicha at 8:13 PM on September 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
DirtyOldTown: Call it a cash grab...
IT'S A CASH GRAB.
Their model is probably Bob Kraft's development Patriot Place where the New England Patriots play, in Foxboro, MA.
The complex covers acres. It has a football stadium, a soccer stadium, a practice facility, a mall, a second commercial development (that runs from Trader Joe's to a Bass Pro Shop), another complex with movie theaters and event spaces, a hotel, and an excellent hospital -- all of which are brand new construction. Also a nature walk around a cranberry bog. In the winter there is a skating rink.
Kraft is making money like crazy, and others are probably thirsting to do the same.
(Actually, the hospital is affiliated with the great facilities in Boston, so it saves us driving all the way in to get top-tier care. Score!)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:03 AM on September 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
IT'S A CASH GRAB.
Their model is probably Bob Kraft's development Patriot Place where the New England Patriots play, in Foxboro, MA.
The complex covers acres. It has a football stadium, a soccer stadium, a practice facility, a mall, a second commercial development (that runs from Trader Joe's to a Bass Pro Shop), another complex with movie theaters and event spaces, a hotel, and an excellent hospital -- all of which are brand new construction. Also a nature walk around a cranberry bog. In the winter there is a skating rink.
Kraft is making money like crazy, and others are probably thirsting to do the same.
(Actually, the hospital is affiliated with the great facilities in Boston, so it saves us driving all the way in to get top-tier care. Score!)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:03 AM on September 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
To add: if it's a bargaining tactic then it's a great one!
If they get the concessions and stay in Chicago, that's a win. If they "have to" build a huge new complex and then make piles of dough off it, a la Patriot Place, that's also a win.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:05 AM on September 30, 2021
If they get the concessions and stay in Chicago, that's a win. If they "have to" build a huge new complex and then make piles of dough off it, a la Patriot Place, that's also a win.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:05 AM on September 30, 2021
"The Bears also hope to develop the 326-acre site in Arlington Heights with shopping, dining and entertainment."
Has this ever worked? Every time I've been near a stadium when a game hasn't been happening, it's been a ghost town. Businesses half staffed, a few tourists wandering around because they took a wrong turn somewhere. Every restaurant the worst version of itself, giving up on serving real food and just chucking some Sysco ravioli in the deep fryer....
When I lived in downtown San Diego this was true by Petco Park. The area around Oracle Park is similar. Chargers stadium in San Diego was the same before they moved. Levi's Stadium is across the street from a couple of datacenters and there's maybe some bad sushi across the street. Fenway may be the exception from my recollection, but that seemed to happen organically rather than be some kind of masterplanned awfulness.
It's hard to build something thriving near a stadium that's only in use 8-12 days a year.
posted by mikesch at 8:25 AM on September 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
Has this ever worked? Every time I've been near a stadium when a game hasn't been happening, it's been a ghost town. Businesses half staffed, a few tourists wandering around because they took a wrong turn somewhere. Every restaurant the worst version of itself, giving up on serving real food and just chucking some Sysco ravioli in the deep fryer....
When I lived in downtown San Diego this was true by Petco Park. The area around Oracle Park is similar. Chargers stadium in San Diego was the same before they moved. Levi's Stadium is across the street from a couple of datacenters and there's maybe some bad sushi across the street. Fenway may be the exception from my recollection, but that seemed to happen organically rather than be some kind of masterplanned awfulness.
It's hard to build something thriving near a stadium that's only in use 8-12 days a year.
posted by mikesch at 8:25 AM on September 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
I lived in the area years and years ago, even taking the train out of that station a few times. Without significant upgrades to the Metra station there (and associated rail lines), and possibly a new freeway or too, well, good luck with game day traffic.
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:45 AM on September 30, 2021
posted by ZeusHumms at 11:45 AM on September 30, 2021
It's hard to build something thriving near a stadium that's only in use 8-12 days a year.
I moved to St. Louis over 15 years ago (damn--that long ago? sheesh!), and when the Rams were here, their game-day presence was limited to traffic. Nearby businesses, such as they are, were barely affected on Sundays. By contrast, the beloved Cardinals (baseball, of course) had more of a presence affecting businesses whenever they'd play at Busch, but the Ballpark Village development across the street really sucked the gameday life out of many bars and restaurants 2-3 blocks away.
Eyebrows brings up a great point about infrastructure, particularly about the roads. The on-again, off-again project to extend IL Route 53 as a toll road is off, as of 2019. I would not be surprised if this switch gets flipped back to ON, with the project being touted as relief routes for the stadium in particular and Northwest Suburban congestion in general.
posted by stannate at 7:56 AM on October 1, 2021
I moved to St. Louis over 15 years ago (damn--that long ago? sheesh!), and when the Rams were here, their game-day presence was limited to traffic. Nearby businesses, such as they are, were barely affected on Sundays. By contrast, the beloved Cardinals (baseball, of course) had more of a presence affecting businesses whenever they'd play at Busch, but the Ballpark Village development across the street really sucked the gameday life out of many bars and restaurants 2-3 blocks away.
Eyebrows brings up a great point about infrastructure, particularly about the roads. The on-again, off-again project to extend IL Route 53 as a toll road is off, as of 2019. I would not be surprised if this switch gets flipped back to ON, with the project being touted as relief routes for the stadium in particular and Northwest Suburban congestion in general.
posted by stannate at 7:56 AM on October 1, 2021
Every time I've been near a stadium when a game hasn't been happening, it's been a ghost town.
I do not, for the life of me, understand why teams in the same city do not collaborate/cross-pollinate to increase their revenue. Why not sell tickets for the new park/outdoor screen area at Gallagher Way (next to Wrigley Field) to watch the Bears games on Sundays? They can fire up the concession booths, roll out merch carts, and people can watch it in a big group. I mean, people will fill up a freaking Buffalo Wild Wings to watch a Bears game with other people. Wouldn't they pay more to watch Chicago sports in a Chicago sports place?
I can tell you I am extremely unlikely to ever pay to see a Bears game in Arlington Heights (or anywhere else). BUT, if the Cubs make the playoffs one year and I can't get tickets, watching it with hundreds/thousands of people in an open air mall next to the Bears's suburban stadium on a giant screen sounds better than being at the Fox & Hound or some shit.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:33 AM on October 1, 2021
I do not, for the life of me, understand why teams in the same city do not collaborate/cross-pollinate to increase their revenue. Why not sell tickets for the new park/outdoor screen area at Gallagher Way (next to Wrigley Field) to watch the Bears games on Sundays? They can fire up the concession booths, roll out merch carts, and people can watch it in a big group. I mean, people will fill up a freaking Buffalo Wild Wings to watch a Bears game with other people. Wouldn't they pay more to watch Chicago sports in a Chicago sports place?
I can tell you I am extremely unlikely to ever pay to see a Bears game in Arlington Heights (or anywhere else). BUT, if the Cubs make the playoffs one year and I can't get tickets, watching it with hundreds/thousands of people in an open air mall next to the Bears's suburban stadium on a giant screen sounds better than being at the Fox & Hound or some shit.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:33 AM on October 1, 2021
mikesch: Has this ever worked? Every time I've been near a stadium when a game hasn't been happening, it's been a ghost town.
Oh, my dude, you should see Patriot Place: the various parking lots always have ton of cars because he brought in non-sports tenants.
I drive 20-some minutes to go to that Trader Joe's, and have gone to the skating rink, the Bass Pro, the hospital, the movie theater (several times, pre-COVID, for corporate events), to watch my little girl's singing group perform outdoors at Christmas time, a bunch of times to walk around the cranberry bog (to tire out the kids), to meet friends for lunch, to go to the Patriots shop, and a few times during Christmas vacation when my kids were stir-crazy and a trip to walk around outside the stadium seemed like a good way to just get out of the house.
That place is always busy, but only because he BUILT BIG.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:49 PM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Oh, my dude, you should see Patriot Place: the various parking lots always have ton of cars because he brought in non-sports tenants.
I drive 20-some minutes to go to that Trader Joe's, and have gone to the skating rink, the Bass Pro, the hospital, the movie theater (several times, pre-COVID, for corporate events), to watch my little girl's singing group perform outdoors at Christmas time, a bunch of times to walk around the cranberry bog (to tire out the kids), to meet friends for lunch, to go to the Patriots shop, and a few times during Christmas vacation when my kids were stir-crazy and a trip to walk around outside the stadium seemed like a good way to just get out of the house.
That place is always busy, but only because he BUILT BIG.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:49 PM on October 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
> Has this ever worked?
The development of Staples Center is widely credited with being one of the key factors (maybe the key factor) in radically jumpstarting Downtown Los Angeles, which for decades had been a total dead zone. Pre-Staples and post-Staples DTLA is radically different.
Both Wrigley and Fenway have historically had thriving neighborhoods around them. I know you've said that that Petco has failed to develop its neighborhood, but as I understand it, that is not the general takeaway. As I understand it, the SF baseball park (now called Oracle Park) also is generally seen to have helped spur development. Here's a study that says that building a stadium spurred development in Cleveland but not Baltimore. SoFi Stadium will likely be an economic boom to its owner once the rest of the development is built out. The key difference between this sort of stadium, and failures like Qualcomm or countless others, is that they aren't surrounded by acres and acres of parking lots. When you build a concrete desert around a stadium, of course no flowers bloom. Another key difference is that baseball stadiums and particularly basketball/hockey arenas are both used more frequently for their main sport and (particularly with arenas) more conducive to concerts and other uses. So Staples Center, for example, is in use the vast majority of the year. Football stadiums are not. And of course, the development needs to be connected to a city, not off in the suburbs, like Arlington.
No city or state should ever publicly finance a stadium, and I guarantee you that any stadium built in Arlington will be a dead zone due to the acres of parking around it. But a stadium-commercial development can certainly work.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in Oakland. There's a major proposal for a baseball stadium that initially was claimed to be the team paying for it themselves -- but when they made the final proposal public, they created a loophole to essentially get hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds without making it look like they were. Now the city is negotiating, and it may not ever be approved.
posted by lewedswiver at 3:53 PM on October 1, 2021
The development of Staples Center is widely credited with being one of the key factors (maybe the key factor) in radically jumpstarting Downtown Los Angeles, which for decades had been a total dead zone. Pre-Staples and post-Staples DTLA is radically different.
Both Wrigley and Fenway have historically had thriving neighborhoods around them. I know you've said that that Petco has failed to develop its neighborhood, but as I understand it, that is not the general takeaway. As I understand it, the SF baseball park (now called Oracle Park) also is generally seen to have helped spur development. Here's a study that says that building a stadium spurred development in Cleveland but not Baltimore. SoFi Stadium will likely be an economic boom to its owner once the rest of the development is built out. The key difference between this sort of stadium, and failures like Qualcomm or countless others, is that they aren't surrounded by acres and acres of parking lots. When you build a concrete desert around a stadium, of course no flowers bloom. Another key difference is that baseball stadiums and particularly basketball/hockey arenas are both used more frequently for their main sport and (particularly with arenas) more conducive to concerts and other uses. So Staples Center, for example, is in use the vast majority of the year. Football stadiums are not. And of course, the development needs to be connected to a city, not off in the suburbs, like Arlington.
No city or state should ever publicly finance a stadium, and I guarantee you that any stadium built in Arlington will be a dead zone due to the acres of parking around it. But a stadium-commercial development can certainly work.
It'll be interesting to see what happens in Oakland. There's a major proposal for a baseball stadium that initially was claimed to be the team paying for it themselves -- but when they made the final proposal public, they created a loophole to essentially get hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds without making it look like they were. Now the city is negotiating, and it may not ever be approved.
posted by lewedswiver at 3:53 PM on October 1, 2021
LOL just imagining all of the Bears fans in my life reading this and trying to remember the last time the Bears did anything worth car-flipping.
January 20, 1986. I can still see my mom's cursive on the VHS tape of that game. (And, really, the entirety of the 1985 season.)
From a weirdly sentimental point, I say if they leave Chicago, they must go home to Decatur.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:05 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
January 20, 1986. I can still see my mom's cursive on the VHS tape of that game. (And, really, the entirety of the 1985 season.)
From a weirdly sentimental point, I say if they leave Chicago, they must go home to Decatur.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:05 AM on October 2, 2021 [1 favorite]
The various state and local politics blogs I follow have been talking A TON about this, and the comments sections are absolutely full of, "Um, do the Bears know about the transit situation to Arlington Heights?" and most commenters (ones who are known to me from years of reading, so not random trolls) are even more bearish (heh) on the transit that I am. People are also a LOT more bearish on suburban seasonal entertainment districts -- I'm like, Ravinia exists, it IS possible, although it seems like a lot of stuff has to come together for that to happen. Most other commenters are like "THIS WILL BE A GHOST TOWN THAT DESTROYS DOWNTOWN ARLINGTON HEIGHTS AND ROLLING MEADOWS BY SUCKING THEM INTO THE VORTEX OF STUPID." I'm like, "But Ravinia's nice?" and they're like "NO YOU ARE WRONG."
The other thing I learned is that Union Pacific -- which owns the line that goes to Arlington Heights and the station at the racetrack -- is in a hugely contentious dispute with Metra (Chicago's suburban commuter rail) that has resulted in both sides suing one another. It's technically over whether UP has to pay the costs of operating Metra's trains for the rates Metra wants to pay (not the train/conductor costs, but the track management/traffic signal/safety guy costs), or whether UP can tell Metra to go screw and pay for its own safety guys and traffic managers and so on. Buuuuuuut apparently there are deeper issues of whether UP wants Metra to pay more for track use, or whether Metra should buy out UP's tracks, or whether UP wants not to run commuter trains on its tracks at all. (Which would not be surprising, all the US Class-I railroads would like us NOT to live in a historically-contingent situation where they have to run 60 Metra trains a day through Chicago on their HUGELY VALUABLE freight tracks and make the freight have to wait.)
Which, it'd be HILARIOUS if the Bears built in Arlington Heights and then UP (in the process of this unrelated lawsuit) said, "NOPE, NO MORE METRA, WE'RE DONE," and then the Bears (or more likely the State of Illinois) had to pay through the NOSE to use UP's tracks (and possibly build UP new tracks or pay for them to have transit on another system's tracks!). OR if UP could hold the entire state hostage every time Metra carriage contracts were renegotiated, because they could just shut down transit to the Bears stadium whenever they felt like it/whenever Metra wouldn't meet their rate demands.
Anyway. I'm a transit pessimist about the Bears moving to Arlington Heights, but I am nowhere near as pessimistic as actual Illinois transit nerds. Which actually makes me less-sure whether the Bears are using Arlington Heights as a bargaining chip -- knowing that AH can't support its transit needs ever -- or whether CHICAGO is, thinking, "yeah, well, they'll rapidly discover AH can't support their transit needs." The thing is? I don't think either party to this negotiation (the Bears or Chicago) is all that good at negotiating (or, like, understanding money), and it's 100% possible they're both playing chicken in the dumbest way possible and we end up with an NFL franchise in Arlington Heights and no way to get to the stadium because none of these people know how to negotiate.
The transit nerds keep pointing out, a little more than a quarter of US freight by volume is shipped by rail (a higher proportion by weight, as trains are good at heavy things); 1/3 of that goes through Chicago; and rail infrastructure is harder to move than truck or plane infrastructure. Because air freight carries small things, if a local airport starts charging too much, you can move to a nearby regional competitor with just a single warehouse (as UPS and FedEx are happy to do). Because trucks mostly pull a single trailer, and every big box store in America has to accommodate them, it's easy to move a trucking nexus. But rail yards are huge and expensive and involve a massive investment in infrastructure that can't easily be moved; removing the Chicago freight rail bottleneck wasn't even considered by the federal government when it invested $4 billion; it just wants to make the bottleneck run faster. Moving it would cost an ABSURD amount. The entire nation is basically sitting on a state-of-the-art Civil War era railroad nexus in Chicago, and going, "Yeah, this is fine, improving it would cost a lot." And now we're hoping that building the Bears stadium in Arlington Heights won't disrupt that patched-together, 160-year-old system. What could go wrong?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:32 PM on October 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
The other thing I learned is that Union Pacific -- which owns the line that goes to Arlington Heights and the station at the racetrack -- is in a hugely contentious dispute with Metra (Chicago's suburban commuter rail) that has resulted in both sides suing one another. It's technically over whether UP has to pay the costs of operating Metra's trains for the rates Metra wants to pay (not the train/conductor costs, but the track management/traffic signal/safety guy costs), or whether UP can tell Metra to go screw and pay for its own safety guys and traffic managers and so on. Buuuuuuut apparently there are deeper issues of whether UP wants Metra to pay more for track use, or whether Metra should buy out UP's tracks, or whether UP wants not to run commuter trains on its tracks at all. (Which would not be surprising, all the US Class-I railroads would like us NOT to live in a historically-contingent situation where they have to run 60 Metra trains a day through Chicago on their HUGELY VALUABLE freight tracks and make the freight have to wait.)
Which, it'd be HILARIOUS if the Bears built in Arlington Heights and then UP (in the process of this unrelated lawsuit) said, "NOPE, NO MORE METRA, WE'RE DONE," and then the Bears (or more likely the State of Illinois) had to pay through the NOSE to use UP's tracks (and possibly build UP new tracks or pay for them to have transit on another system's tracks!). OR if UP could hold the entire state hostage every time Metra carriage contracts were renegotiated, because they could just shut down transit to the Bears stadium whenever they felt like it/whenever Metra wouldn't meet their rate demands.
Anyway. I'm a transit pessimist about the Bears moving to Arlington Heights, but I am nowhere near as pessimistic as actual Illinois transit nerds. Which actually makes me less-sure whether the Bears are using Arlington Heights as a bargaining chip -- knowing that AH can't support its transit needs ever -- or whether CHICAGO is, thinking, "yeah, well, they'll rapidly discover AH can't support their transit needs." The thing is? I don't think either party to this negotiation (the Bears or Chicago) is all that good at negotiating (or, like, understanding money), and it's 100% possible they're both playing chicken in the dumbest way possible and we end up with an NFL franchise in Arlington Heights and no way to get to the stadium because none of these people know how to negotiate.
The transit nerds keep pointing out, a little more than a quarter of US freight by volume is shipped by rail (a higher proportion by weight, as trains are good at heavy things); 1/3 of that goes through Chicago; and rail infrastructure is harder to move than truck or plane infrastructure. Because air freight carries small things, if a local airport starts charging too much, you can move to a nearby regional competitor with just a single warehouse (as UPS and FedEx are happy to do). Because trucks mostly pull a single trailer, and every big box store in America has to accommodate them, it's easy to move a trucking nexus. But rail yards are huge and expensive and involve a massive investment in infrastructure that can't easily be moved; removing the Chicago freight rail bottleneck wasn't even considered by the federal government when it invested $4 billion; it just wants to make the bottleneck run faster. Moving it would cost an ABSURD amount. The entire nation is basically sitting on a state-of-the-art Civil War era railroad nexus in Chicago, and going, "Yeah, this is fine, improving it would cost a lot." And now we're hoping that building the Bears stadium in Arlington Heights won't disrupt that patched-together, 160-year-old system. What could go wrong?
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:32 PM on October 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
To add, UP and Metra's carriage arrangements are subject to the US Surface Transportation Board -- not Illinois, and definitely not Chicago. Not even Congress. (Also, apparently both Metra and UP are aggressively understaffing and underfunding trains on the line to Arlington Heights, in an effort to make the other pay up -- sometimes even refusing to collect fares. Apparently the crime rate on the line is alarming. I always have Big Questions when suburbanites use the word "alarming" in reference to crime, but apparently it's compared to the rates on other suburban lines, which, all right, possibly not alarmist.)
The Route 53 expansion -- the Illinois highway that runs past Arlington racecourse -- would cost $2.5 billion if the entire thing was contracted TODAY and locked in at today's rates, with no Bears moving in. The most recent proposed plans were entirely funded by raising tolls and by the state highway fund (which is in DIRE, DIRE straits right now and has no money; AND ALSO, is the most corrupt unit of government in Illinois, WHICH IS A DISTINCTION YOU HAVE TO WORK VERY HARD TO ACHIEVE). Periodically the feds flirt with providing some portion of the funding, but never very much, and if the Bears moved to AH, the feds would be looking at funding upgrades on I-90 and I-294.
I know the NFL actually does really well when lobbying Congress, but I don't know if even they can manage $2.5 billion in funds to upgrade a STATE highway, especially not when the feds declined to contribute towards the state's $3.5 billion road upgrade (including federal interstates) around O'Hare. I looked it up and apparently you ARE allowed to lobby the Surface Transportation Board, BUT basically everyone who lobbies it is saying "MORE MONEY FOR FREIGHT, LESS MONEY FOR PASSENGERS!" and that's the way the STB has been leaning for 30 years, so I don't know how effective the NFL could be at the STB. Especially not the McCaskeys, who, as noted, ARE VERY BAD AT HAVING MONEY. And making deals. And running football teams. And playing chicken.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:56 PM on October 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
The Route 53 expansion -- the Illinois highway that runs past Arlington racecourse -- would cost $2.5 billion if the entire thing was contracted TODAY and locked in at today's rates, with no Bears moving in. The most recent proposed plans were entirely funded by raising tolls and by the state highway fund (which is in DIRE, DIRE straits right now and has no money; AND ALSO, is the most corrupt unit of government in Illinois, WHICH IS A DISTINCTION YOU HAVE TO WORK VERY HARD TO ACHIEVE). Periodically the feds flirt with providing some portion of the funding, but never very much, and if the Bears moved to AH, the feds would be looking at funding upgrades on I-90 and I-294.
I know the NFL actually does really well when lobbying Congress, but I don't know if even they can manage $2.5 billion in funds to upgrade a STATE highway, especially not when the feds declined to contribute towards the state's $3.5 billion road upgrade (including federal interstates) around O'Hare. I looked it up and apparently you ARE allowed to lobby the Surface Transportation Board, BUT basically everyone who lobbies it is saying "MORE MONEY FOR FREIGHT, LESS MONEY FOR PASSENGERS!" and that's the way the STB has been leaning for 30 years, so I don't know how effective the NFL could be at the STB. Especially not the McCaskeys, who, as noted, ARE VERY BAD AT HAVING MONEY. And making deals. And running football teams. And playing chicken.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:56 PM on October 2, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh God, Eyebrows. Thank you for sharing all of that intel. This would be a hilarible nightmare if only *half* of the players involved were corrupt and inept--the additional competing interests (also entirely corrupt and inept, of course) really put this over the top. I await further developments with dread!
posted by merriment at 11:18 AM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by merriment at 11:18 AM on October 3, 2021 [1 favorite]
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Also, that Metra ride back from Arlington station is going to be worse than the one from Ravinia.
posted by hwyengr at 7:27 AM on September 29, 2021 [17 favorites]