City Making Plan To Convince Bears To Stay In Chicago: Lightfoot

CHICAGO — Mayor Lori Lightfoot says that Soldier Field can be a miserable place to watch a football game under certain conditions. But that won’t keep her or the city from attempting to keep the Chicago Bears from skipping town for suburban Arlington Heights.

Lightfoot said in a radio interview on Friday that she is working on a financial package that she hopes will entice the Bears for leaving their Lakefront home for a 30-acre suburban plot of land. The Bears paid $197.2 million for the former home of the Arlington Park Racetrack in September, but team officials said last month, it will be at least later this year or into 2023 before the sale closes.

Lightfoot told the Mully & Haugh Show on Friday that she hopes that a plan coming from the city will keep the Bears from leaving Soldier Field. Lightfoot said she realizes that the stadium needs plenty of work, but she hopes that the city's coming offer makes it “very, very compelling” financially for the Bears to stick around.

“We’re a tier-one team and a tier-one market, a tier-one audience, fan base, and I don’t think they can get that in Arlington Heights,” Lightfoot said in the interview on The Score 670-AM . “But ultimately, the decision will be theirs.”

In a separate radio interview, Lightfoot said that the city will explore putting a roof on Soldier Field as part of making the stadium "more hospitable" to fans, the mayor told ESPN 1000. She also said the city could offer other locations to the Bears if they chose to remain in the city although the Lightfoot said she is not a fan of "100 percent municipality funded stadiums."

Bears officials have said that they have plans to build a state-of-the-art stadium and entertainment complex in Arlington Heights once the deal closes. Lightfoot said Friday that there are a series of challenges in the current Soldier Field set-up, including it taking too long for fans to get into the stadium. Lightfoot said if fans are seated on the West side of the stadium or in one of the end zones, it can lend itself to a “pretty crappy fan experience,” the mayor said. It only gets worse when it gets cold, the mayor added.

But she, for one, would like to see the Bears stay put.

“Whether the Bears stay or go, and I hope they stay — and we’re going to keep working on it,” Lightfoot said. “We can do a lot more to enhance the quality of the fan experience, and frankly our assets and our revenue.”

With a capacity of 61,500, Soldier Field is one of the league’s smallest venues and given its current amenities, would not be considered to host a Super Bowl. The stadium is home to the Chicago Fire, which drew just more than 10,000 fans last season.

Lightfoot this week appointed a 23-member committee to re-imagine the lakefront museum campus, which had been a hub of tourism revenue before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Soldier Field is included in that plan but the Mayor’s office did not specify how whether the Bears call Soldier Field home affects the plan moving forward.

The Bears meanwhile look at the Arlington Heights location as a unique opportunity to create a desirable venue – not only for football but for other entertainment events. President Ted Phillips said “there’s nothing like it” in the greater Chicago area and said the location was now the Bears’ main focus for a stadium plan moving forward.