Austin Bonta

And we did send it out to the bears sooner than it made the news.

It recently made the news this week in a really big way.

And we definitely felt it was important to take the opportunity to get it out to the media and explain the details of our proposal.

But at the end of the day, I can tell you that from the calls we've been getting and from the attention it's received, I think this is very real.

Definitely more real than Iowa, but I think about as real as the other Northwest Indiana sites.

Oh, that's a great question.

And certainly, to put it simply, one day I'm sure there'll be books written or maybe one great book about the story of the Bears and

how they ended up in the stadium that ultimately comes their home that we all know and love.

But no, we found out from the announcement from the Bears.

I couldn't tell you because I don't know how many people knew ahead of time the announcement was coming.

I just knew that when the announcement came out, we got to work.

One of the big things that I've talked about a lot, and I certainly talked about it in the press conference yesterday, is the importance of realizing that there is already muscle memory for fans who live in Chicago, fans who live in Illinois when it comes to coming to Northwest Indiana, especially in the summer and especially in the fall.

And in Portage, we know that because we've got beaches, we see the Illinois plates, we meet people who come into the city because it's a great destination in the summer.

The travel time feels farther away when you look on it in a map.

But if you're somebody who lives in Portage and you drive to Chicago pretty often like I do, you get used to that travel time.

And I know people who live in Chicago, but they commute to work in Portage.

And it's a time frame that they get used to with the travel.

And then you throw in the real opportunity for public transportation, the utilization of the South Shore line to have a site where you can walk off the train and then walk down to the stadium

I think it's something pretty incredible.

And I think it's something that when more people think about it and they've seen it happen, they realize that this is something very workable for fans.