As the mayor of Hammond sees it, Arlington Heights is where people wear tuxedos and sip Champagne.
No place for Da Bears, he argues, given the team’s famously blue-collar roots.
But Hammond, with the city of Chicago literally across the street? In the view of Mayor Thomas M. McDermott Jr., that is the tippety-top spot for a new stadium for the Monsters of the Midway.
Who cares about the state line anyway? It’s not like the games won’t still sell out.
Bears players and staffers, McDermott told us, have been golfing for years on Hammond’s serene Lost Marsh Golf Course, conveniently combinable with a trip to the high-performing Horseshoe Casino, which might at least partially explain why Hammond became either a preferred site or, depending on how you view the Bears’ multifarious manipulations, their preferred bargaining chip against a state of Illinois that has been famously reluctant to give the Bears what they want.
Indiana, of course, has come through with everything the Bears want, financially speaking, but only if they are willing to move to a 350-acre site near Wolf Lake in Hammond.
“The Bears will save billions by coming to Hammond,” the mayor told us, making the fair point that if this simply were a business deal, this would be a no-brainer, given the difference in the two state’s incentives (and, we’ll add, their ability to offer such incentives to a private business). But he knows it is not.
“Indiana has a great offer on the table,” he said. “But there is a nostalgia factor.”
Ay, there’s the rub, as Hamlet famously said.
There’s a political factor, too, when it comes to the future of Gov. JB Pritzker.
We enjoyed talking with the very likable and frank McDermott, who has been in his job since 2003 and clearly knows and cares for every inch of his community. In our hourlong conversation last week, he told us numerous times how much he loves Chicago and how happy he was when Rahm Emanuel was still mayor, and he was willing to talk with him.
He repeated his (and Hammond’s) Democratic Party bona fides, Indiana of course being a state controlled by Republicans, and asserted that at least 90% of Hammond’s population is made up of Bears fans, implying that is not the case in Arlington Heights. He told us, more than once, how much affection he feels for Illinois, his rivals in this long-lived dance with a much-desired partner. And he even said he’d like to see the Bears stay in Chicago, but just believes that is not going to happen and Hammond is the second-best choice.
We’ve not heard that magnanimity reciprocated much in Illinois. But then northwest Indiana is used to that kind of treatment.
“I don’t believe Illinois can afford the Bears,” McDermott said at one point before jumping right back in with, “I am not trying to be a jerk by saying this.”
We did not assume he was. On the contrary, he made a good point.
Among the other things we learned, aside from Hammond being the only Indiana site ever under serious consideration, was the scale of the investment the Bears already have sunk into its Hammond explorations, which clearly go beyond a leverage play, which does not mean they are not also a leverage play.
We heard McDermott dismiss the environmental smearing that has been part of this process. The 350-acre site by Wolf Lake that the Bears plan to use for a potential stadium and associated “amenities,” he said when pressed, is “clean as a whistle.”
But the main argument he used is that Hammond is a perfect match, culturally, for the Bears, being far more diverse than suburban Arlington Heights (Hammond is 23% Black compared with 2% in Arlington Heights, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). And a better deal for the fans, too, given what he calls “The Gap” when it comes to tax rates on parking, the price of those half-time brewskis and on tickets that would not be subject to any Illinois amusement tax.
We had long wanted to ask one of the Indiana leaders in the Bears’ wooing why they appear willing to give so much to a team that seemingly had made no commitment to them. If you try to negotiate in a car dealership, we told the mayor, the salesman typically says, “if I can do this for you, will you drive the car home tonight?” Only then does the salesperson go in and talk to the manager.
But in Indiana, the evidence suggests no such commitment was either sought or granted.
“I wish they’d choose Hammond right now and just start building the stadium,” McDermott told us, by way of a response. “But they are in the position of power and they are comparing offers. My job is to close deals and bring people to the city of Hammond.”
Fighting words, Mr. Mayor. But there are deals and there is this deal. A deal that could make him mayor for life, although that might happen anyway.
Either way, McDermott had a couple more baubles to dangle.
If the Bears go to Hammond, drivers will likely exit at 129th Street.
“We want to name that Walter Payton Street,” McDermott said.
There’s already a Lake George in Hammond where folks fish for bass.
The mayor said they’ll also change that to Lake George McCaskey in honor of the Bears’ chairman and controlling owner.
The mayor didn’t add that line about not wanting to be a jerk that time.
Here, finally, was hard Indiana ball in the most genial of packages.
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