Bears Revisit Arlington Site for New Stadium

A little more than a year after the Chicago Bears publicly stated their intentions of building a new stadium on the lakefront in Chicago, the team has added a new potential site to its plans.

On Wednesday during the NFL’s annual meeting, CEO Kevin Warren said the Bears are now looking into building their new stadium in Arlington Heights. Famously, the city is home to the former Arlington International Racecourse — known as Arlington Park — a renowned horse racing facility that was in operation from 1927-2021. The franchise currently owns the 326-acre property in the suburbs of Chicago.

“The focus now is both downtown and Arlington Heights,” Warren said. “These are not linear processes or projects. They take time, they take a lot of energy and effort. I am very, very pleased with where we are. I think we, collectively as a group, are where we thought we would be.”

The prized land was purchased by the Bears in September 2021 for $197.2 million. Nearly two years later, the franchise started looking into other potential sites for a stadium as the Arlington Heights project was “at risk” due to an impasse over property taxes that reached $100 million.

However, last December, the Arlington Heights Board of Trustees unanimously approved a tax settlement with three school districts — which settled the annual property tax bill for the Bears’ potential stadium site at $3.6 million. The potential project at Arlington Park would feature a multibillion-dollar stadium and include restaurants, retail space and real estate.

“Because these projects are so complex and so difficult, they’re literally virtually impossible to do if you don’t have all hands on deck and everyone committed,” Warren said. “Even if you have that they’re difficult. So that was important to see the focus on it.”

“My goal still remains, to be able to move dirt around in 2025, which is important because there’s a lot of preconstruction work that needs to go into these projects, whether you’re at the museum campus, Michael Reese [hospital site] or downtown, to get things ready to go, and so we’re only one-quarter of the way through the year,” Warren said.

Bears chairman George McCaskey, speaking for the first time since the death of his mother, Virginia Halas McCaskey, said he expects the ownership structure to remain intact. Additionally, he spoke to the allure of Arlington Heights as a potential new home for the franchise.

“Two great locations: downtown and Arlington,” McCaskey said. “Both have their pluses and minuses. Both present fantastic opportunities, and we’ll just have to see how it plays out.

“George Halas identified (Arlington Heights) more than 50 years ago as an ideal place for a Bears stadium, and I don’t know if anything that’s happened since then changed that evaluation. As Kevin mentioned, it’s pad ready, it’s got the Metra stop, plenty of acreage, topography is good. It can be an outstanding, beautiful green space with enhancements to Salt Creek, but the downtown locations have their advantages, too. Kevin has said it since he’s been here. Beautiful spot by the lake. It’s idyllic and if there were sufficient improvements in infrastructure to make that location accessible 365 days of the year, it can be a fantastic opportunity as well.”