While Bears fans are thinking about the divisional playoff game this Sunday at Soldier Field, team executives are asking them to think about a new stadium across the border in Indiana.
The Bears sent a survey to season-ticket holders Monday asking how they would feel about a Hoosier home field and what they would be willing to pay for seats at a new dome “approximately 20 miles from Chicago.”
The survey’s introduction describes a “modern, fan-first stadium experience surrounded by a vibrant neighborhood destination,” with 15,000 parking spaces — more than double the capacity outside Soldier Field — for “one of the most robust gameday tailgating environments in the NFL.”
“As we have said, we are actively evaluating opportunities across the wider Chicagoland region for a new stadium,” a team spokesman said in an email. “The survey is a standard and important step in that process, helping us understand fan interest, accessibility, and experience preferences as we assess the feasibility of a potential stadium in Northwest Indiana. We continue to do the work required to make informed, responsible, long-term decisions for our fans and our organization.”
The Bears conducted a similar survey last year about a potential stadium in Arlington Heights, which the team has coveted since landing a $197 million deal to buy the shuttered Arlington International Racecourse in 2021.
Before the Bears’ stunning comeback playoff win over the Packers last weekend, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell joined team chairman George McCaskey and president Kevin Warren on tours of the Arlington Heights property, plus two potential Indiana sites, sources said. The team is considering a plot near Wolf Lake in Hammond, as well as land near Gary’s Hard Rock Casino.
Arlington Heights had been the Bears’ main focus until last month, when Warren announced they would look across the border because Illinois lawmakers haven’t thrown their support behind the project.
The team has committed to paying $2 billion to cover the full cost of a new stadium, but it will need taxpayer dollars for infrastructure upgrades — and it wants state lawmakers to allow it to negotiate its property tax payments with local governments.
Gov. JB Pritzker and legislative leaders in Springfield have signaled a willingness to chip in on infrastructure, but they’ve urged the team to identify a mechanism to pay off more than half a billion dollars still owed on Soldier Field’s 2003 renovation as a condition to getting any legislative help.
“Building a stadium is, from my perspective, about doing what’s best for the taxpayers,” Pritzker said Tuesday. “This is a private business. We help private businesses all the time in the state, and I want to help if it’s with infrastructure, as we do with other private businesses — that’s absolutely a way we could do that. But as I’ve said, and the Bears have heard this, that we’re not going to build a stadium for the Chicago Bears.”
The Democratic governor said he’s “optimistic” about overlap in the team’s infrastructure requests for the Arlington site — roughly $855 million in taxpayer funds — and work that was already identified or planned as part of his signature infrastructure improvement plan.
“What … the Bears are identifying as their needs are actually needs that would exist whether the Bears went to Arlington Heights or not. So I think that gives me some optimism that really there is a package that could be put together that would help with infrastructure,” Pritzker said. “It also requires, though, that local governments understand that when businesses are thinking about moving to their area, that they expect to be able to do something about property taxes for some period of time. That’s not something the state controls.”
Meanwhile, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and other local leaders have urged the team to consider the old Michael Reese Hospital site in Bronzeville, near 31st Street and the lakefront.
State senators were set to gavel in for the new year Tuesday afternoon. The Illinois House will convene next week, but there’s not expected to be much action in the Capitol until after Pritzker presents his budget proposal next month.
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