Couch: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Is Right: Bears Are Holding City For Ransom
I get the appeal. When you live in the suburbs, you get lots of free parking. I have a three-car garage and don’t even keep a car in there. You can walk slowly, wear bright-colored clothes if you want or even white socks with flip flops!
So the Chicago Bears announced Thursday that they had put a bid on the land in suburban Arlington Heights, site of the most beautiful horse racing track anywhere, Arlington Park. The idea would be to build a new Bears stadium there, theoretically with a roof so they can redefine Bear Weather as 68 degrees and predictable.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot says it’s all a negotiating ploy by the Bears as they try to get more out of their current deal at Soldier Field in the city. That would include more renovations.
Apparently, the half billion dollars in tax money that was put into remodeling Soldier Field for the Bears 20 years ago just didn’t go as far as the Bears would’ve liked. But Lightfoot notes that the Bears are locked into a lease through 2033, and aren’t going anywhere.
So who knows how this will come out. It’s going to have to work its way through Chicago’s old-time politics. Personally, I do think the Bears are bluffing, and that Lightfoot is right.
But I don’t really care if the Bears play in Soldier Field or the suburbs or Gary, Ind., as they once threatened to do. In fact, I dare them to play in Gary. Every few years for the past half century, the Bears have threatened to move to another site if they don’t get a better deal or a refurbished Soldier Field. In fact, this isn’t even the first time the Bears have threatened to move to this exact, specific plot of land.
All I care about is this: Just don’t use my tax dollars. According to Forbes, the Bears are worth $3.5 billion. They can afford their own stadium, without the welfare that goes to billionaires all the time. Build your own stadium and live within your means, just like any other family-run business. The Bears, founded by George Halas, are run by the Halas/McCaskey family.
Let me put it this way: My daughter will be graduating from college in a year and theoretically will start a career. The Bears don’t need her tax dollars to build them a stadium as much as she might need them for a bus pass.
“Like most Bears fans,’’ Lightfoot said, “we want the organization to focus on putting a winning team on the field, beating the Packers finally and being relevant past October. Everything else is noise.’’
I love how she put the word “finally’’ in there.
So Lightfoot is playing hardball on this, and she’s not going to want to be known as the mayor who ran the Bears out of Chicago. Unfortunately for her, the Bears are much more popular in Chicago than she is.
The Bears are trying to scare Chicagoans into thinking they might be moving. It’s only about a 45-minute drive from Soldier Field to Arlington Park, so you might think this isn’t a big deal anyway. But you have to understand that people in the city, Chicagoans, don’t even think of suburban Chicago as having anything to do with Chicago.
The term used here -- and I think invented by the Chicago Tribune -- is “Chicagoland.’’ That’s a way to try to put city dwellers and suburbanites under one roof. To city people, Chicagoland might be an entirely different planet.
I was never in favor of refurbishing Soldier Field for the Bears in the early 2000s anyway. Soldier Field was built 100 years ago close to Lake Michigan with Greek columns. There isn’t a subway -- called the L in Chicago -- that goes out there, and basically there’s only one enormous parking lot.
The Bears threatened to move, and the city turned that beautiful old stadium into something with green glass and who knows what. As Chicagoans say: It looks like a spaceship landed on the Parthenon. The lakefront throughout most of downtown is park space. It always felt as if they could’ve opened up one end of the stadium and used it as public space somehow.
Instead, the spaceship landed.
If the Bears want more, then how about this: Pay for it yourself.
If the Bears would like any advice on living in the suburbs, I’ve got it for them. My guess, though, is that most of the Bears and their front office, and certainly owner Virginia McCaskey, already live in the suburbs.
The Bears do have a city feel to them, and the views of the skyline are always nice on TV. So that will change if the move actually happens.
If the Bears really do move, Chicagoans are going to be torn on whether they should still be called “Chicago’’ Bears. I realize the New York Jets and New York Giants don’t even play in the state of New York, but all of Chicago’s major teams play right in the city.
Arlington Heights Bears is fine by me. Most people here just call them “Da Bears’’ anyway. Sears Tower is now Willis Tower. I have no idea what Comiskey Park is now called. Things change. The Bears franchise started as the Decatur Staleys anyway.
Chicagoland Bears? That sounds like a joke. As long as Justin Fields can play quarterback and there’s plenty of parking, any name works. Just maybe not Gary Bears.