Dan Wiederer

And so that's that's one part of this equation that I think was an update today.

The other part of it, I thought George McCaskey in nine words summed the entire current state of the project up very well when he said, we don't have a deal to consider right now, which was his way of saying, like, neither state.

has a finished product ready for the bears and until one state has a finished product there is no decision to be made right like eventually you get a finished product and you say okay now we've got to compare it against what potential is there with the other side and right now you've got in indiana you've got a site that needs further vetting in terms of environmental issues in terms of infrastructure issues in terms of how well it can be built out for some of that multi-use district stuff

You've got the legislation in place to help you acquire and finance a stadium in Illinois.

It's the opposite.

They've got this 326 acre property in Arlington Heights that's ready to go, but they need promises from the Illinois government that they will have the requisite help with infrastructure.

around the stadium and the surrounding area.

And then they also need that mega project spill, which, again, as you mentioned, we've talked about a lot on this podcast.

Until that's passed, nothing at all can get started on a property in the northwest suburbs that the Bears began showing interest in almost five years ago, Mark.

Just pause there for a second because Courtney Cronin asked a question today that has been pretty poignant.

for years.

And it was very direct to George McCaskey of just what you're kind of talking about here.

Why did you buy this property in Arlington Heights when you didn't have the clarity that you'd be able to do what you want?

Again, we're coming up on the five-year anniversary of the Bears putting in their bid for that property.

And as we stand here right now recording this podcast, there's no promise that they will ever do anything with that land.

Right.

Other than potentially sell it if they can't get something done there.

And Courtney's question was essentially like, why would you invest in something like that without having answers to these questions?

And George's answer was was sort of, oh, well, Churchill Downs made it available.

And so we had to act at the timeline that it was up for sale.