The Chicago Bears’ Friday announcement that they will pursue placing their new domed stadium just over the Chicago border in Hammond, seemingly ends a beauty contest between Indiana and Illinois in which the latter could never unify enough to compete.
So with the caveat that this insane saga is never going to be over until there are shovels in the ground, it’s going to be “Bear Down, Hammond Bears.” Better start getting used to the idea.
We would have preferred the Bears figure out a way to stay in Chicago, but of course that ship sailed long ago, notwithstanding Mayor Brandon Johnson’s ongoing protestations. And we don’t view construction of a stadium in Hammond to be any kind of great tragedy for the city of Chicago if it was going to lose the Bears anyway; indeed, the city — particularly the South Side — is likely to see some spillover benefits given Hammond’s proximity.
Despite all the smears from Illinois, Hammond has some real assets: space, an enthusiastic and well-liked mayor, recently expanded rail links, solid road links, a nearby airport in Gary for private jets and, of course, proximity to the city limits. Northwest Indiana has suffered through years of hard times as its heavy industry pulled out, and having this stadium there might well spark a healthy renaissance for a crucial part of our shared metro area.
All that said, the inability of Illinois’ political leaders to get their act together so as to put an alternative on the table in the face of Indiana’s aggressive move to poach the Bears is a stinging indictment of this state’s politicians. All of the key players in this drama were Democrats and so were incentivized to grab the political credit for keeping a founding franchise in by far the biggest sports league in America in the state where it was born.
Given our state’s one-party rule, they now shoulder the blame for losing the Chicago Bears — yes, the team will continue to be called the Chicago Bears, even as it plays its future home games in Indiana.
Blame, too, goes to the Bears, of course, whose political miscalculations have been well-documented by us and others and don’t need belaboring here.
Here is the place where we state for the record that much still needs to happen before shovels break dirt — or slag, if you’re a sore loser — in northwest Indiana. A lease must be signed. Major infrastructure plans around the stadium will have to be finalized and financed. The local taxes supporting Indiana’s bid for the Bears must be approved, although the odds sure look good to us.
For Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and the rest of the state’s politicians have demonstrated the political will to surmount problems, and do so quickly. We’ll count ourselves surprised if the Bears find any insurmountable roadblocks to building in Hammond.
Illinois’ political leaders, following this news, largely characterized the Bears’ announcement that they were “advancing” plans to build in Hammond as more of the same. Reporting that the Bears will continue to listen to Illinois pols prompted Senate President Don Harmon to say in a statement, “We are ready and willing to re-engage with the Chicago Bears when they realize Illinois will always be the best place for them.”
A spokesman for Gov. JB Pritzker laid the blame firmly at the Bears’ feet, saying the team has “spent the last six years, and especially the last six months, shifting their position on a stadium location. That has hindered their progress. Today appears to be another instance of that after Illinois leaders have been working with the Bears in good faith.”
The governor was said to remain open to a “sensible solution that protects taxpayers.”
Will Pritzker, Harmon and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch really take another run at this after the embarrassment of this past legislative session? Perhaps. There are many stages of grief.
We will say that communication between those three principals in our state government was pretty sad. In 1988, Republican Gov. Jim Thompson hammered out a deal with Senate President Phil Rock and House Speaker Michael Madigan, both Democrats, to build a taxpayer-subsidized stadium for the Chicago White Sox after concluding the team’s threat to move to Florida was real. That brinkmanship play was distasteful back then, but the leaders picked a lane and pursued it.
The Bears’ tactics aren’t as brazenly bare-knuckled as White Sox Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf’s actions nearly 40 years ago, but the dynamic is similar. Our political leaders needed to pick a lane but failed to do so.
In the face of the generous offer to the Bears from Illinois’ neighbor to the east, a defensible position to have taken would be that Illinois won’t dangle taxpayer cash — whether in the form of direct stadium subsidies or property tax breaks — to a highly lucrative professional sports franchise worth billions.
Our politicians didn’t have the courage to do that, fearing the wrath of Bears fans. So they chose the worst of all worlds: Profess to want a deal with the Bears, but decline to meet their consistently stated price. The mercenary Bears have veered in many different directions on a number of issues in this never-ending stadium passion play, but they’ve held firm on their refusal to subject themselves to the hated property tax regime by which most of the rest of us in this state must abide. We just don’t have the same power to negotiate. An argument can be made that the Bears deserved an exception. Most Illinoisans, at least outside the environs of the northwest suburbs and especially in the city, thought otherwise.
What we can conclude without equivocation is that Illinois has suffered a real black eye from this process.
Pritzker, who’s running for a third term as governor and harbors presidential aspirations, likes to claim substantial economic development wins during his eight years in Springfield. And he indeed has some of which to boast.
Among ordinary folks, however, relatively few are even cognizant of the quantum technology site on the South Side or the Rivian electric vehicle factory in Normal. But the Bears? Yeah, football fans are legion throughout Illinois, as they are in most other parts of the country. The failure to put together a package to keep the Bears in Illinois is something everyone can understand.
Sometimes perception is reality. And the message sent by the sad display in Springfield this past spring is that this state’s political class can’t hammer out a deal even when they’ve all maintained they want to do so.
Time will tell what the damage will be to Illinois’ reputation as a state that can make big things happen.
But there will be damage. That much already is assured.
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