Bears' stadium saga enters its most critical month yet
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What updates are there on the Bears' stadium saga?
Rahimi Harris and Grody. Middays 10 to 2. On 104.3 The Score. One of the things I always look at coming home to the city is I always look for cranes in the air.
If Crane Kenny's watching from, like, a suite, is that enough of being cranes in the air? Does that count? It's baseball season. That's Kevin Warren. You know that soundbite. This is Rahimi Harrison-Grody. Dan Wiederer is in on this Friday. And, Dan, earlier this morning, you posted to Twitter and social media an update on the stadium. What can you tell us?
Well, look, it is May 1st today, and we flipped that calendar from April to May.
It's going to be May.
It is a critical month in the Bears' stadium saga for a number of reasons. The spring legislative session in Springfield ends when this month ends. The Bears have been getting increased pressure from the league to try to get some resolution and conclusion to this whole stadium saga, which, again, in some ways is approaching five years early next month. And so they're going to have to meet again with the stadium committee a couple weeks from now. The next set of league meetings is in Orlando, May 18th through 20th. There will be, obviously, a convening in the stadium committee there where it will be expected to be formally addressed once again. And so you're just trying to figure out what is the next step in this process.
And I think there's a little bit of... impatience from the league and other ownership around the league to just to have some clarity on where this thing is headed. And yet I do think that the bears have done a good job recently at, at getting a foot in the butt of, of lawmakers to try to, to make some advancement with the pilot legislation. That seems like it is making progress and now everybody's got to get their fingerprints on it and, and use their pen to add in their specific revisions to meet the needs of their constituents. But it's, it's a lot, And I think this month is going to be so key in trying to figure out whether they're able to make the necessary progress to make the Cook County Arlington Heights project a reality.
Well, and I think there's a couple of important notes from your post here. For example, the next set of league meetings, Orlando, May 18th through 20th. So that's another benchmark for time, you know, where we can check in on this again. And a friendly reminder that this isn't just the Bears' bill. This is regarding any large development. Right. So that is business in the state of Illinois.
Why is May a critical month for the Bears' stadium plans?
This would change the way business is done here. And I think it favors more businesses to be able to, it's incentivizing business to develop here. And that's not just the Bears. So that's partly, I think, why this is taking a longer time.
For sure. Yeah. And you want to make sure if you are a lawmaker that you're not just kind of rubber stamping something that doesn't apply to as many projects as possible in the future, even though there's sort of these nebulous hypothetical projects that aren't on the radar yet. But certainly there's a lot to this and there's a lot to the cost of everything. And we know how much the cost goes up every single month that you don't have money. shovel on the ground and buildings being built. And so, look, again, it was 2021 when the Bears bid on that property in Arlington Heights. And, you know, obviously, I think everyone, the consensus is that was the first big misstep in this whole thing, where it was like, you put a bid on a property that you didn't know
was going to be able to be built in the way you wanted it built in a timely manner. And that's why we're here five years later still trying to work through the lawmaking part of this process when I think there were probably other avenues to put a hold on the property and see if you could figure some of these things out rather than get that purchasing process engaged as quickly as it was.
Well, you're right. And that's what always, you know, people will text in. They're like, the Bears had to buy that property. I'm like, man, I can sell you anything if you believe that.
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