After a messy week of developments that included vague, revived hopes for a Chicago stadium and public sniping between Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, the governor on Friday looked ahead to the upcoming May 31 deadline and said he still sees a deal emerging that could keep the Bears in Illinois.
“I’ve seen miracles happen every year. Every single year,” Pritzker said after an unrelated event in Joliet when asked about his assessment of the legislature passing a last-minute bill to incentivize the Bears in the state. “I feel confident that there will be a bill that gets brought up in the Senate, and then hopefully they’ll pass it and send it over to the House, and that bill will be about whether or not we’re keeping them in the state of Illinois or letting them go to Indiana.”
With a week left before the end of the spring session, lawmakers are looking to finalize a package that would provide infrastructure funding and property tax certainty to help the team build a new stadium complex on the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse, which the Bears purchased in early 2023. The stadium legislation is just one of a litany of legislative goals lawmakers are seeking to address by the end of the month, including the state budget and potentially an ambitious housing package.
Pritzker’s apparent optimism came days after Democratic state Sen. Bill Cunningham of Chicago, a key Illinois lawmaker spearheading negotiations on the stadium and megaprojects legislation, said he was facing fresh opposition from colleagues who believed the Bears had expressed newfound openness to building a lakefront stadium in Chicago.
The governor said Friday he was not concerned that the latest developments would stall progress on the so-called megaprojects bill. Pritzker also softened his tone toward Johnson compared with earlier in the week, when the governor had said the mayor was pushing for a new Chicago stadium despite having “no plan.”
“I think we’re past that,” Pritzker said when asked if Johnson was overplaying his hand.
Cunningham said earlier that he and his colleagues recently learned the Bears quietly expressed willingness to revisit a lakefront stadium site in talks with Johnson’s office — a revelation that complicated the already delicate negotiations in Springfield.
The prospect of a new Bears stadium in Chicago conflicts with what Pritzker and the Bears have said publicly for months — that the team is considering only Arlington Heights and Hammond, Indiana. Johnson has been the main dissenting voice, insisting during a visit to Springfield earlier this month that it was still possible to keep the Bears in the city.
A Johnson spokesperson has said there were “several” meetings in April between Bears counsel and management and the city’s corporation counsel to discuss terms for a new lakefront stadium. But the Bears pushed back, reiterating in a statement that the team is considering only Arlington Heights and Indiana.
The two Democrats traded barbs over the stadium. While Pritzker said Johnson had “no plan” for a new stadium, Johnson attributed the “disconnect” between the two to their “different upbringings” and pointed to the governor’s billionaire status.
“There is no concrete plan from the city on the table right now,” Cunningham said. “But by virtue of the fact that the Bears reached out to the city in recent weeks to talk about the lakefront, they have breathed life into the mayor’s efforts.”
In the Illinois legislative efforts, the Bears are seeking roughly $855 million in infrastructure funding, as well as certainty about what the team would pay in property taxes during the next 40 years for building on the Arlington Heights site. Lawmakers are trying to balance those concerns as the public has pushed back on giving away benefits to a multibillion-dollar sports franchise.
Indiana lawmakers and Republican Gov. Mike Braun earlier this year passed legislation to build a stadium across the border, though more work remains before that site could become a reality.
Pritzker on Friday said he hasn’t personally lobbied members of the Chicago legislative delegation on the latest stadium issue.
“This week, I’m not like calling them into my office and talking to each one of them. We have a lot of things on our plate, as you might know, to get done this week,” Pritzker said.
The stadium fight is not the only high-stakes item crowding the legislative calendar. Pritzker has been pushing an ambitious package of proposals to expand housing in Illinois, and Democratic state senators on Friday unveiled a set of bills that incorporate elements of the governor’s plan that look to eliminate red tape, along with several others aimed at housing affordability.
The timing of the new package, introduced with little more than a week left in the session, left its prospects unclear. Pritzker had expressed optimism about his proposals earlier in the week but said Friday he had not yet seen the Senate’s version.
The governor has generally proposed allowing four units to be built statewide on residential lots larger than 2,500 square feet, six units on lots larger than 5,000 square feet, and eight units on lots larger than 7,500 square feet. The newer legislation would allow four units by right on lots bigger than 2,500 square feet and six units on lots bigger than 7,500 square feet. It would also require some units in middle housing developments to be affordable to households with close to an area’s median income.
The Illinois Municipal League, which has opposed the governor’s housing proposals largely on local-control grounds, came out against the new middle-housing bill, though it offered mixed feedback on other measures in the Senate package, according to an update from CEO Brad Cole to municipal officials that the Illinois Municipal League provided to the Tribune.
Abundant Housing Illinois and YIMBY Illinois, groups that advocate for building more housing, were still reviewing the Senate package late Friday morning, Abundant Housing’s Steven Vance said in an email.
The middle housing bill’s sponsor, Chicago Democratic state Sen. Mattie Hunter, declined to immediately comment on Friday.
State senators on Friday also pushed bills that would impose a fee on private equity firms purchasing housing and ease the path for building housing on church properties.
The budget for the upcoming fiscal year also remains unresolved. Pritzker on Friday said he feels, for the first time, the federal government is “working against the states.”
“We’re doing everything we can to try to address things that are frankly some of the largest and most significant issues that I think our state has faced,” he said.
