Austin Bonta

to December 17th, 2025, when the Bears announced the surge has expanded to the entire Chicagoland area, we said, man, this was on our minds from the beginning.

We owe it to the Bears, the fans, our city, and the Chicagoland region to be able to offer what we think is the best site.

Now, by the time that we got to the point that they announced

We already had acquired the land needed to make the land actually workable without the bears being on the search.

The big question that we were facing as a city was step two, how to make this land accessible.

I've been working with my city council to figure out how to responsibly budget things like building a bridge over the waterway to make the site more accessible.

We've been talking about how to go from the north side to connect the train better to the land.

At the end of the day, the bears searching for a site gave us the ability to do step two, which is the connectivity, and step three, which is the development simultaneously.

And that's why when people ask, well, what does your city get out of it with the bears deal?

Simply put,

I think a question was even asked yesterday, if I remember it correctly, it was, what happens if the bears don't pick the site?

And what I said, we know that this is a high quality, incredible destination site where all the different modes of transportation come together.

And we have a plan to turn it into something incredible.

The bears picking the site for our city

just allows that to happen a little faster and with two steps happening closer together, if that makes sense.

Oh, but you were asking about how we reach the bears or how we go about it from there.

Portage actually is the third largest city in the region, and we are a

Really amazing city when you actually kind of look under the hood and see what we've got.

We have an international port.

We've got a steel mill.