Illinois Lawmakers Race to Advance $5B Bears Stadium Plan

With time almost up to keep the Bears in Illinois, state legislators are potentially coalescing on a bill that would help support a $5 billion domed stadium in suburban Arlington Heights. 

State Rep. Kam Buckner, a key legislative figure in the stadium debate, is developing a bill amendment that would add property-tax relief for homeowners to a long-discussed “megaprojects” bill. The structure of Buckner’s proposal expands the scope of the legislation beyond its original focus on large-scale developers.

The Bears view the megaprojects bill as vital to any plan to stay in Illinois, as it will give the team certainty over local taxation, and, in turn, provide needed clarity for the team to gain the private financing that will fund nearly all of the proposed stadium. If the team does build a stadium in Arlington Heights, it would be on land the team already owns. 

In February, a narrower version of this bill cleared an Illinois House of Representatives committee, but went no further—in large part due to political divisions among legislators. Emanuel Welch, the state’s Democrat Speaker of the House, has an unofficial rule of not bringing any vote to the full floor unless he has sufficient votes within his own party for passage. 

That stance has run up against some members of the Chicago delegation, as well as Mayor Brandon Johnson, who have been angling to keep the Bears in the city—despite the lack of a viable stadium option there. 

The latest effort, however, is aimed at having broader bipartisan appeal across the state, while also remaining mindful of the minimal time the state has left to do a deal. A House vote could arrive as soon as Wednesday. 

“It’ll do something that the state has not done, that other states have not done in megaprojects legislation,” Buckner told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It’ll actually consider how these things should be able to help regular taxpayers as well.”

Broader Dynamics 

The renewed political push in Illinois as the Bears have several other forces converging that are helping accelerate a long-awaited decision on the stadium plans. Among them:

• The NFL’s stadium committee is set to meet next week, with the Bears’ situation the only item on the agenda. That panel, including several other team owners, is increasingly eager to see tangible progress by the Bears after several years of political detours. That’s particularly true amid an ongoing stadium development boom elsewhere in the league, including in Buffalo, Tennessee, Cleveland, Washington, Kansas City, and Denver. 
• The Illinois spring legislative session ends May 31, roughly lining up with the team’s loose target to finalize a stadium choice by the late spring or early summer. 
• The Bears still have a standing offer to move to Hammond, Ind., as state leaders have already approved a stadium bill there. Team owner George McCaskey and president and CEO Kevin Warren met with Hammond officials last Friday “to finish the necessary due diligence” on the stadium site there. 

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has already toured potential Bears stadium sites in both Indiana and Illinois, and remains keenly focused on the matter as well.

“I think it’s really important they come to a resolution on this relatively soon,” Goodell said recently. “This is an important time to get this resolved sooner rather than later.”