ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. — Chicago Bears President Kevin Warren said at a forum Monday night the team wants to build a world-class NFL stadium but would not proceed with a multibillion dollar project in Arlington Heights without an agreement on the tax bill for the land recently purchased.
“We’ve had a stalemate and a lack of communication and it’s a little more convoluted at this point in time than I thought it would be,” he said, speaking during an Arlington Heights residents and stakeholders forum at Metropolis Performing Arts Center in the village’s downtown.
The forum, attended by about 300 people, was hosted by the newly formed Touchdown Arlington, a group of local business leaders that formed to drum up local support for the Bears’ anticipated move from Soldier Field in Chicago to Arlington Heights.
The Bears purchased the former Arlington International Racecourse for $197 million in February. The team has pitched a multibillion dollar stadium and mixed-use development on the 326-acre site as a potential future home for the Bears.
Warren said Monday he wants to build “the best building in all of sports” and namechecked Taylor Swift concerts, monster truck and WWE entertainment wresting events as possible uses in a domed stadium during the football team’s offseason.
But he also stressed that a stadium development at the racetrack was far from a done deal.
Throughout the hour he was onstage, Warren punctuated his expressions of excitement and optimism with cautions that the team needed to know it had a “legitimate partner” in local governments.
He was referring to the team’s deadlock with a trio of local school districts whose finances stand to be impacted by potential property tax changes at the racecourse.
While Warren and other Bears officials have said the team will pay its fair share in property taxes and Warren repeated that point Monday, they’ve also made clear that they’re only willing to pay so much, especially before the property is operational.
The team proposed paying $4.3 million in property taxes for the land, which Warren said was $1.5 million higher than what former owner Churchill Downs paid for the same land. The school districts have proposed the team pay about $8 million in property taxes.
He called on local school districts to return to the negotiating table and said he was hopeful about the future of those talks.
However, he said, “if we’re not communicating, which we haven’t been, there’s not going to be much progress made.”
Over the last month, the Bears have met with officials in Naperville, while leaders in Rockford and Waukegan have also thrown those towns in the ring as potential destinations for the team.
Team executives have also met with new Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
At the time, Johnson said he and Bears brass had discussed their “shared commitment to Chicago,” adding “we want to make sure we can keep shuffling here in the city of Chicago with the Bears.”
Warren said he had gotten a phone call from another potential host municipality on his way to the event, but a Bears representative Tuesday declined to name the most recent suitor.
Asked what kind of contribution an average Arlington Heights resident could expect to make in taxes, Warren said “those are questions I would ask their local political leaders.”
The only formal agreement between the team and any local government so far is a predevelopment agreement with Arlington Heights, approved in November 2022.
That agreement details how they hope to work together and lays out a road map beginning with two studies analyzing possible impacts to the local economy and traffic.
Warren said the team would move ahead with those studies once the organization was certain it would be moving to Arlington Heights.
Michael Mach and Lynne Park, of Schaumburg, said they attended the meeting to see what local business leaders had to say about the project.
Mach, 60, said he was a fan of “whatever is bringing money into the region” but acknowledged that a future stadium development “would change the region dramatically.”
He said he and Park saw traffic backup on Illinois Route 53 on their way to the meeting and observed that the infrastructure needed improvements, regardless of whether the team developed the racetrack.
Former Arlington Heights Trustee John Scaletta, who retired from the Village Board in May, said his takeaway from the meeting was that the Bears were still “very interested” in Arlington Heights.
He attended hoping to find out when the impact studies would be complete, he said, and left with an answer of sorts: “They’ll have the study completed when they know for sure that Arlington Heights is going to be their future home.”
He said he was left wanting to know “what the Bears were really looking for” from local government bodies. It also struck him that the team hadn’t yet thought in detail about how a potential development would interact with the village’s existing downtown, he said.
During the meeting, Warren had said he would be “ecstatic” about the prospect of the team’s relocation if he were a local business owner and mentioned the idea of spectators being able to walk to events.
“There is a close proximity between the stadium and downtown Arlington Heights, but (it isn’t) walkable,” he said.
Tom Woznicki, 65, attended the meeting as a supporter of the project and called the event “a good start.” He said he’d love to see it “come to fruition here, rather than Naperville.”
Woznicki said he didn’t have positive or negative feelings about the idea of public money helping to fund the development. In fact, he said, he thought the team should pay less in taxes while they redevelop the site.
“If we have to come up with extra money, so be it,” he said. “It’s going to be better for the whole economic area. Our housing would go up in value. It would bring more people into town.”
Arlington Heights officials have said they won’t allow the project to move forward unless the team can show it will be of a net economic benefit to the area.
