For several months, proponents of the unpopular redesign plan for Soldier Field have tried to deny, and contain, the damage they’ve suffered. In sometimes misleading ways, they have attempted to rebuff questions and shut down a debate that has now expanded to include even the financing scheme for the project.
On Friday, Mayor Richard Daley again tried to stymie opposition to a project that would defile the city’s lakefront by mounting a vast, ugly seating bowl atop a mere shell of a war memorial.
Daley and the company that owns the Chicago Bears confirmed at a press conference that the company will forgo millions in revenues by not attempting to sell naming rights to the stadium.
This is a welcome acknowledgement by Daley and the Bears that it would be a sacrilege to let a business sell naming rights to a monument to dead soldiers. It is also a tacit acknowledgement that no corporation in its right mind would pay to deface a war memorial.
As far as it goes, this decision to embrace the obvious is laudable. But it doesn’t go far enough.
At Daley’s press conference, his handlers stuck American flags on either side of the podium, and rounded up a cluster of military veterans to pose behind the mayor. The veterans applauded the fact that Soldier Field’s name now cannot change.
Off camera, though, several of the veterans said what they’ve been saying for months. They do not like the design. They think the seating bowl will overwhelm the war memorial. But they held their noses and settled for keeping the name intact. “You can’t have it all,” confided John Mahoney, past state commander of the American Legion. “I don’t really like the plan.”
The mayor spoke of the need to provide an economic boost now, through jobs and contracts on Soldier Field reconstruction. What the mayor and the Bears don’t want to acknowledge is that the worsening economic picture exposes how vulnerable their plan is to a drop in taxes collected on hotel stays.
Daley pledged at the get-go that Chicago taxpayers would not have to fund his stadium deal. Ever since, supporters of the plan have played up its reliance on the city’s hotel tax–and played down the fact that, if those revenues fall short, the state will fill the gap by diverting the city’s share of state income tax revenues.
The fall-off in travel since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has forced Daley’s financial team to rejigger the deal. In effect, they will repay less of the project’s debt in the first two years, then spread the cost of that deferral over the 30-year life of its bonds.
If the hotel industry fully rebounds, this new scheme will work. If not, the day of reckoning is merely postponed. Since Sept. 11, several state legislators and Chicago aldermen who voted for the plan have been sweating. They know that if taxpayers have to pay for a stadium, there will be no tolerance for lame excuses–or higher taxes.
And they will have no excuse at all: They put Chicago taxpayers on the hook in an 11th-hour concession to save the deal in the Illinois legislature last year.
Last week’s damage control also failed to address another main pitfall–both before and after Sept. 11–of Daley’s plan.
The plan would put an out-of-scale monstrosity on a fragile public lakefront. Its immensity would overwhelm the museum campus the mayor orchestrated north of the stadium. One unscripted moment of Daley’s press conference came when a reporter asked if Daley likes the proposed design. He stammered for a moment and obliquely answered, “I would say they’ve done everything possible.”
What’s puzzling is why the Bears’ owners continue to inflict the Soldier Field plan on themselves. Since the deal was sealed last fall, they already have agreed to cut 1,500 seats, and now will lose perhaps $300 million in naming rights. Those losses come on top of the high risk of permanently driving away season ticket-holders when the team leaves town during reconstruction of Soldier Field.
The obvious solution is a new stadium at a new locale, with whatever capacity and corporate sponsor the Bears desire.
A second puzzle is Daley’s reluctance to find a smarter alternative. The mayor’s decision that Soldier Field’s name will not change suggests he understands how high the stakes have become.
Most hot issues eventually blow over. Daley knows this one will not. He is mayor of Chicago, not coat holder to the McCaskey family. Chicago needs a new football stadium. It does not need a battle over Soldier Field.
This should be Daley’s moment to shine. He should be choreographing a new and much more imaginative stadium plan. Instead, he is running out of thumbs to stick in a very leaky dike.
It is good that Daley and the Bears have decided to save Soldier Field’s name. Far more important, they now need to save Soldier Field.
