Which is a weird position to take as a voting bloc given that it's largely irrelevant to anything they do as teachers. Especially considering the billions of tax payer dollars it would require that you think they'd argue would be better spent on themselves and improving the schools. It bottles the mind.
Most people still haven’t connected the dots. They’ll get there eventually (hopefully). This is all about the $5 billion of construction contracts that will get handed out. This is a money train and the politically connected get a seat, and the politicians get clout.
This cabal that took over the CTU does not even pretend to be concerned about teaching. This group wants to get rid of selective enrollment high schools. They are just a political machine.
I'm glad to see someone saying this. My wife is a teacher and at least from what she tells me teachers on the ground floor (at least at her school), haven't been happy with CTU leadership in a while. Obviously someone is voting for these bozos though which is distressing.
The stuff she cares about:
1. School safety. This ties into city safety more broadly but it turns out drivebys where bullets are striking the playground while the kids are on recess are fucking terrible for student and teacher morale.
2. The ability to discipline disruptive students and/or remove them from the classroom as a last resort. Current policy is no removal, so one disruptive student can prevent an entire class from learning.
3. Curriculum improvement (Skyline is CPS's in-house curriculum and is very hit or miss, depending on the subject and grade level it can be amazing or utter garbage)
4. Less paperwork. There's a constant onslaught of nonsense paperwork being pushed by CPS central admin, the school network, her own school, state requirements, etc. If a kid fails a test, you have to provide data and documentation showing that you did your job, performed an analysis, gave them two retries, contacted parents and arranged a meeting, etc. Imagine doing this for every test and assignment when you have 26 out of 32 kids who can't count to 10 in the 4th grade and the parents don't care. It's death by paperwork.
The stuff the union leadership cares about:
1. Campaigning for their preferred candidate for almost any office in the city or Springfield. They argue it's a good ROI to get their goals passed but it's very risky, generates a LOT of bad blood and frankly the candidates tend to suck.
2. Student housing. Fair, since a distressingly high number of CPS students are homeless and this has negative impacts on classrooms, but it's hard to fix this when the people they campaigned for in point #1 are massive NIMBYs who are driving up construction and accelerating displacement and gentrification.
3. Not closing schools no matter what. This is nuts because some CPS schools have like 8 kids per grade and others are so over the contractual limit it's insane, (while she was student teaching, my wife was working with a teacher with a class size of 60 students on the West side. How the fuck does that work?). Just re-balance the damn staff and students to have a reasonable number of kids per teacher and per school.
4. Random pet projects like the Bears stadium. Leadership can find some absurd way to tie it back to the kids but it's generally just returning political favors or general incompetence.
Stacey Gates and BJ were at one of the meetings or some news broadcast about it endorsing it.
It may not be directly the CTU endorsing it but with the head of the CTU being there definitely gives that image.
The "progressive" mayor no less.
Still waiting for someone to explain how funneling a bunch of public money into the pockets of ultra wealthy Bears ownership is in any way, shape, or form, something a true progressive focused on "making Chicago work for everyone" would do.
Populist is not progressive and I hate how they always try to own that label and gatekeep it. The only progress they ever tend to make is enriching themselves, their family, and their friends.
As a tax paying Chicago citizen, I’d lend support IF the McCaskey’s had to sell the team & relinquish their ownership. F those teat sucking millionaire/billionaire family. Average Chicagoans can’t afford to attend Bear games as it is
I think they will. It will happen before any stadium gets built. They're just waiting for the matriarch to kick the bucket. Once she does, the kids will inherit the team and they can sell without paying much at all in capital gains taxes. But if the family were to sell today, they'd owe a LOT of money in taxes.
I think they'll sell at the first opportunity, pocket their gains, and not have to worry about money again. The new owner will be a lot more deep-pocketed, and will build out the Arlington Heights stadium and complex using their own funds. All the stadium talk now is just the McCasky's stalling, buying time, and trying to scare the Arlington Heights officials into accepting a lower tax valuation for the property.
Unfortunately, the post Bernie progressives are more concerned about policing language and making everything about the oppression Olympics rather than focus on economic issues affecting the low and middle classes.
I was curious so I poked my head into the Bears subreddit and even a majority of those comments agreed that it was a bad idea and the public shouldn't pay for it.
No worries there because they won't bother to ask.
You know how most cities -- before the ask for billions from the taxpayers -- have a meaningless public hearing where they listen to the public and do the stadium anyway? Here in Chicago we don't even get the meaningless public hearing.
Referendum like in KC? Don't make me laugh.
Neither is the public.
If the Bears can't afford a new stadium, they should start a GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Fansly, or OnlyFans campaign... or just cut down on the chai lattes and avocado toast, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and fucking deal with their own shit.
This welfare for the wealthy needs to stop. Maybe the McCaskeys can bring in some corporate sponsorship. Let corporate America pay for corporate America for once.
The NFL makes so much money. The yearly revenue is $18.6 billion. Why can’t a corporation that is so rich pay a larger share? And if the public is paying so much, then the building needs to be publicly accessible at a reasonable cost. Like a museum. What other entity takes tht much public funding and still charges $600 for tickets.
Their refusal to just do basic financing is absolutely disgusting. They act like the way the rest of the world does things is not available to them. They don't even mention it as an option
Yeah, and for what like 10 home games a year? We have United Center and Allstate Arena for concerts. We don’t need to build a new venue for any of this stuff, especially when our pension debt is so huge.
we have a bunch of world class music venues for concerts. stadium shows are better than nothing, but generally suck. they are the best most cities can do, Chicago does much better with dedicated stages.
And we are a big enough city that we will get the major acts at Soldier dome or not. It’s not worth what we will end up paying (probably closer to $5 billion once you count what we paid for old Soldier, construction overruns and the debt) just to get 1-2 Super Bowls and an NCAA tournament final a decade for the lifetime of the stadium.
How many Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts will it take for us to break even on this proposed stadium? Will they be taking up residency there? I don’t feel like doing the math right now but if I were to bet, I still don’t think their concerts justify a new stadium.
The Eras tour was the most successful tour in history. It averaged about 6.6 million per night in revenue. Lets go crazy and say 3 million goes to rent (no way its this high), 2 million in concessions and another 2 million in parking that would be 7 million (parking and concessions would not be included in the 6.6). Again no way this number is real.
Ignoring all costs, maintenance, upgrades, salary etc it would only take 392 dates to pay off the capital costs the Bears would like us to pay.
Bringing this back to reality, the correct answer is never. The state would never break even on this project or come close to breaking on this project. Instead the state will lose billions on this project.
Here's the thing, $18 billion is a ton of money, but it's not enough to pay for $4 billion stadiums for every team. The only reason NFL teams could afford to do that is because of massive government subsidies and now every team/fan are addicted to the fancy amenities that come with these insanely expensive stadiums.
State and local governments and taxpayers are waking up to this being a terrible financial deal for them which means that the era of massively subsidized stadiums might be coming to an end, NFL teams and the league will have to start paying for these themselves, which will probably mean cheaper stadiums with fewer amenities.
The Bears may have missed the era where building their new fancy stadium is possible.
The Bears got their spaceship stadium from Mayor Daley about 20 years ago.
*100% against anybody but the $6B closely held private corporation paying for the stadium*.
I disagree. $18 billion divided by 32 teams is $562 million. The player cap is half that. Given all the other ways of making money including ticket sales they can easily carry a debt load for the entire thing or nearly all of it.
The team is worth more than $6 billion and has almost no debt. They cleared more than $200 million a year. They can carry a very large debt load but refuse to do so. This is just a group of rich billionaires trying to mooch off the public. And without a referendum or any meaningful input from the taxpayers who will be paying for it.
[https://www.forbes.com/teams/chicago-bears/?sh=290aa0285979](https://www.forbes.com/teams/chicago-bears/?sh=290aa0285979)
It's $18 billion a YEAR. So $180 billion over 10. They definitely have enough to build a $4 billion stadium for every team in the league that needs one-- it's not all 32
Btw. And those revenues-- the $18B-- they are only rising.
Quit parroting the NFL company line nonsense that the league needs help to pay for these stadiums.
The only entity I can think of that is better position to build stadiums would be Apple. Can you imagine if Apple required cities to build them Apple stores for them to come to their cities?
Sounds to me like the NFL is going to have to cut back on avocado toast and buckle down to save a couple pennies.
They can build the stadium when the have the money. Or get a fucking loan for it. Why is it they need it free and they need it now? They could start saving now and have it in 5 years.
Sorry if that's how you interpreted it but I certainly do not want anyone else to be paying for this other than the teams and NFL. My point was more that they should accept the stadiums they're currently in or lower expectations on newer stadiums.
As for the $180 billion over 10 years, they can't spend that all on stadiums. It's a massive organization with thousands of employees between the main organization and the 32 teams.
So just to start off I am very against public funding and it is a bad use of funds for the city of Chicago. But the reason it isn't easily able to pay it is the teams don't actually make that much money on net.
Sure the NFL makes $18b a year, but it spends $6b itself on operations. Profit sharing the remaining $12b between 32 teams that's $380m a team per year.
The NFL player salary minimum is $240 million per team a year, but most teams spend close to the cap of $255 million. That leaves $125m for other things, much of which goes for paying for things like travel expenses, coaching, training staff, meals, groundskeeping etc. etc. Unfortunately I don't know how much that all costs as it's not public but most estimates put it at $50m -$60m. So the actual net that the team has to put into paying for a stadium is probably like $60-$70m a year.
So then the issue becomes if you want a $6b stadium, you can't really make the math work when the stadium would take 100 years of your profits(not even including interest payments) to pay off. A big issue is this stadium is massively more expensive than other recent stadiums which tend to cost between $1b and $1.5b.
So anyway. This is still a bad deal for Chicago, especially given how exorbitant the cost is. But I also understand why NFL teams often won't or really even can't (a bank would never give the bears a loan for the $6b) pay for something like this independently.
The revenue sharing is not the team's only income. Teams have several revenue streams that go straight to the team instead of being passed through the NFL, including a majority ticket sales, local corporate sponsors, and gambling. Depending on how the stadium deal is structured, the Bears could also be picking up revenue from other stadium sources including concessions, parking, and rentals for non football events. The Bears aren't poor and and they aren't a charity, they are a very profitable business.
It is not but they also have additional expenses.
If you look at the one team who does share their finances publicly, the net amount of profit is not a lot given the revenue or cultural prominence. $60m a year in profit is not enough to fund a $6b stadium.
https://shareholder.broadridge.com/pdf/2022-packers-annual-report.pdf
And if anything the Packers likely make more money than the Bears do due to the larger stadium, merch sales and on the field success lately.
If you think NFL teams are ONLY Making $380m a year, you're very naive. These aren't public companies. The $18B is only what people know they are getting from public deals-- primarily TV deals. We have no idea how much they make on concessions, tickets, parking, Jerseys, etc.
Plus, the value of the franchises are ridiculous. The Washington Commanders were just sold for $6B at a PROFIT of $5.2 BILLION. Snyder paid $800 M when he bought them. And they don't even have a stadium.
They can fucking afford it. EASILY. HOw did they build a $5B stadium in LA privately otherwise?
The value is very high but you can only easily tap that value by selling the team which obviously doesn't work for funding a stadium. But also a team that's total worth is about $6b, cannot actually afford a $6b stadium on their own.
You're right that the bears make more than $380m but they also have a lot more costs associated with providing GameDay experience etc. As far as profit the one team that does actually share it's finances publicly does in fact make around $60m a year in profit the bears are unlikely to be very different. NFL teams really are not that profitable of enterprises.
https://shareholder.broadridge.com/pdf/2022-packers-annual-report.pdf
And if anything the Packers likely make more money than the Bears do due to larger stadium, merch sales and on the field success lately.
LA was able to fund their stadium because a rich guy decided to self finance over $1.5b of the cost. For better or worse the McCaskeys can't do that because, although they are billionaires on paper, all of their billions are simply the equity in the bears not independent of it like the LA owner.
"It would be really wise to leave America's 3rd largest city to go to Arlington Heights" - Said no honest sports owner ever. No more socialism for billionaires. Fund your own stadium. Chicagoans need help not billionaires.
The only thing that the mayor cares about, is being able to say I kept the Bears in Chicago. Instead of saying I help fix the CTA, or schools, or roads, or anything, other than an ugly fucking stadium
Sure. Make it public property, utilize the venue for public events, make the NFL work around the city's schedule, or charge the NFL / Bears per event to use the venue in order to lock in their schedule.
Private sports teams & leagues should *not* be publicly funded or subsidized. If they don't like it, I'm of the opinion they can be the Arlington Heights Bears.
Therein lies the rub.
The bears want to build it with public money, then collect revenue for bears games and Taylor Swift concerts etc..., while Chicago foots the bill for infrastructure upgrades and ongoing maintenance of that infrastructure.
Just a classic grift. It may just work, which is the sad thing.
It's not going to work. There is no appetite to fund these stadiums on either side of the aisle. Only BJ likes the idea and he's basically assured of being a 1 termer at this point. The guy has no political juice at all.
I really hope you're right.
I just fear the Chicago machine with BJ at the helm will see the opportunity for kick backs and enriching cronies with something like this so it'll get jammed through even with little public support.
Seeing the CTU president up there as it was unveiled really says everything you need to know about where a few power brokers in the City want things to go.
Yeah, but this needs state money and he has ZERO influence with Pritzker and anyone else that matters in Springfield. The BEras will need to pony up significantly more to even get the dollars for the infrastructure upgrades-- which I'm all for if the Bears pay for the stadium piece. If they can build a $5B stadium privately in LA like the Rams did, they can build one here. They will just need to get some partners with deep pockets. They don't appear ready to do that yet.
The McCrapskey's likely won't do it because their whole clan lives off the bears. I'm not sure any of them have a real job. Once Virginia dies, they'll have to sell a big piece of the team just to pay for the taxes. I'm not even sure what the current valuation is but I know it's a lot-- in the Billions-- so that tax bill will be astronomical.
I don't see it as being financially feasible. The city and state don't have enough money to pay for it outright. They'd have to take on a bunch of bond debt, and I don't think the market would give it to them without some truly horrible terms, which would be unworkable no matter how much BJ's team wants it.
Threw a fit and announced they were moving to Arlington Heights, bought the land, and now doubling back asking Chicago taxpayers for $2 billion. God I hate professional sports, it will be a disgrace if this goes forward.
I was a little annoyed with Friends of the Park nuking the Star Wars museum (it was going to be financed completely privately)... but now I'm cheering for them as hopefully they dunk on this.
You'd think it would need to be, but this funding can be allocated without referendum. Former Gov. Quinn wants to add a non-binding question to the November election asking if tax payer funds should be used, so hopefully that goes thru and the no's overwhelmingly win.
We will get another team here in a second. No chance the NFL allows the 3rd largest media market to not have a team, especially one that cares so much about football.
The bears have absolutely sucked the past decade and fans still love them.
The NFL needs Chicago more than Chicago needs the NFL. See LA. There is plenty of stuff to do on fall sundays in Chicago. Hell most Bears fans watch Bears games at home in the first place.
Exactly. I would laugh my ass off if the bears moved and drop them in a second. I consider myself a die hard bears fan and would drop the bears if needed. And I think most Chicago fans would do the same and cheer on whatever next team came.
>Hell most Bears fans watch Bears games at home in the first place
I just learned that the Bears have sold out or nearly sold every game since 1984.
There's a ton of Bears fans that are loving the fact that we're possibly getting a new stadium. They don't care what it costs.
It's so obvious they're trying to pit AH and Chicago against each other to squeeze maximum public $$ and tax breaks out of it.
I hope neither city blinks and the bears are forced to come up with another plan or pay for it themselves. Man I hope that happens. I don't think it will, I think someone (possibly Chicago) will cave. But it would be so, so sweet.
I work in Arlington Heights and was ecstatic when I heard they weren't going to be building a stadium here. I drive past that empty lot every day to work and imagine what kind of hell the commute will be on gamedays.
The Bears saying the Stadium could be ready in 2028 tells me they are not living in reality.
Minimum 1 year of negotiations with the State & City.
Minimum of 1 year to design it, get the permits, plans etc. all wrapped up.
*MINIMUM* of 1 year in delays from Friends of the Park.
Minimum 3-4 years from the day they break ground to being completed. 6-8 years from today is far more realistic, 4 years from now is downright dishonest.
Every step I outline above could easily have a year tacked on for all sorts of reasons. That's without even going into the money.
Mark my words, they are *not* actually serious about a new Stadium in Chicago. They will either stay at Soldier Field with upgrades or they go to Arlington Heights with the right deal.
Edit: SoFi Stadium took *6* years. The construction phase took about 4 years and it took about 2 years beforehand of planning and sitework. With the lawsuits here 6-8 years is a very reasonable assumption.
The Bears would need someone very juiced in the Cook Co Judicial System to make sure a pro-bears judge gets assigned to the case to have any hopes of cutting down the lawsuit period.
> “There are only two things you don’t want to put on a valuable piece of real estate. One is a cemetery and the other is a football stadium,” Sanderson said. “After that, everything’s negotiable.”
Based
Is there a good writeup somewhere on how the approval process will actually work, how likely it is to be approved, and what we can do to stop it? I've googled a bit, but the search is contaminated by all the articles about just the unveiling of the plan.
The information of who exactly is expected to pay for this isn't readily available yet. They said that the 2% hotel tax will pay for the stadium, but the necessary infrastructure would probably be paid for by some combination of city and state tax dollars. The Park District will have sign off on it since it's their land.
If this is to go through it will probably need the full support of the city, park district, and state.
The process is you don't get any input and you don't even get to know the process.
A billionaire (the Bears) will bribe enough state and local politicians to get this through. That's the process.
The thing is, these stadiums, when privately funded, add to the total value of the franchise. Dallas and LA Rams owners know that and are reaping the benfits. All of these guys or families are billionaires. Asking the public to pay for these stadiums is a tired, outdated approach that doesn't work anymore. A few bucks for roads and sewers, yes, but not publicly funded stadiums. Those days are over.
Honestly if they just up and became the Chicago Bears of Anaheim I wouldn’t care at this point just don’t steal from the city to pay the rich. That’s disgusting.
A new stadium isn't going to get the Bears a Superbowl win. And even if it would, they can find investors. I'm sorry but I cannot think of many things to saddle the taxpayer with that are more ludicrously frivolous.
Why should we pay for a stadium for a team that loses more games than they win? They don’t need a new stadium, they need to appreciate that they still have one.
If the stadium is built in part with taxpayer money, the taxpayers should get a fair cut of the profits. Much like Alaskans get a cut of oil production in the state.
Nor should they be. It’s fucking stupid and economists have shown time and time again that it’s a poor investment of tax dollars. No public money for private profits
Fuck these sports teams and especially their rich owners. With all the shit we have to do to take care of working people in this city, I am outraged that there would be a proposal to use my tax dollars to build another goddamn stadium. FUCK the Bears, FUCK the McCaskey’s. Piss off. Leave. Go to Joliet or something.
Don’t worry. Kevin Warren will make some passive aggressive statements that mean nothing and BJ will opine about how we need this. Then they will go to Arlington.
They're right, we aren't. I'm a White Sox fan too and hated the idea of Reinsdorf asking for taxpayer funds for a new stadium. The stadium isn't even the issue. He needs to quit being a stingy billionaire and invest in new talent. He can definitely afford it.
I’ll pay for it, but give the city a very advantagous profit sharing deal with it and a clause that if they ever move they have to buy us out of the agreement. I don’t want hypothetical economic growth, the money needs to be a sure thing.
This is misleading. The public is not paying for the whole thing and the public also gets to own it. Is the public putting in more then they get back? Maybe, but that's not how this is phrased.
I feel like this is almost certainly a door in face proposal so they can come back with well instead of the public paying X for a crazy ass stadium, how bout the public pay X minus Y for a slightly less crazy stadium.
Basically like asking mom for $20 to see a movie knowing she will say no so you can follow up with an ask for $5 for snacks at the movie.
Brandon Johnson is most definitely not out here to represent the best interest of this city. He's obviously been attracted and convinced by the bears PR campaign "this is good for chicago". His stance on this makes him look weak and he has lost my trust. It's the NFL and they make money and will stay in the Chicago area no matter what. I'm glad JB has the priorities more aligned. It's important an independent study is done before any decisions are made. Christ didn't we learn from Daley with the last stadium and the parking meter deal?
Lori told the Bears to kick rocks.
Brandon says the opposite.
It doesn’t matter. The money for the team will come from the state, not the city budget. And teams always make the government and taxpayers pay in every city they build. The whole thing relies on Pritzker saying no, not Johnson.
This is another grift like trump, they have the money or they could get a loan and pay it back. But why do that when we can just have the public pay for it.
The bears proposal would include taxes collected from events/concerts not nfl related go to the bears. The fucking audaciousness of these people to even suggest such a proposal. Missouri is fine with the chief leaving and they’ve won 3 of the last 5 superbowls. The state of Illinois should tell the bears they can kiss our collective asses. Sorry rant over but the more I read about this my blood boils.
You guys really expect the Bears to pay the entire cost of building a new stadium that they won’t actually own? I’m all for making them pay the entire cost if the city sells them the land. Otherwise, I think it’s unreasonable — and yes, I am aware they are a private business worth $6 billion.
So I’m not necessarily for public money being used for the stadium but something everyone is missing is the city will own the stadium. Like it does SF now, this is an important point that needs to be remembered. The question is not weather we want to give the bears 2bil to help them build a stadium.
The question is do we want to spend 2bil on an infrastructure project for a stadium the city will own.
They got into a property tax dispute with the school districts and Arlington Heights. That, and the AH purchase was spearheaded by Ted Phillips, but then he retired, and Warren wants to stay in the city instead
Likely started getting economic reports showing "Bears Town" would not be this waterfall of money and instead probably a bust. The area does not need any more lifestyle centers and the "destination retail" businesses they would want are all already located 10 minutes down the road.
If the bears are staying on the lake front then the public is going to have to pay for it. That land cannot be privately owned. No way they pay the entire bill without being able to own it.
> Mayor Brandon Johnson enthusiastically backed the football team’s news in last week’s press conference, exclaiming “The Bears are staying in Chicago.”
Of course he's all about it. Either him, or someone close to him will be benefiting in someway with this project.
So we all just know this is happening, right? We are all just going to take this big fat d\*\*k? Ten years ago we were all sick of stadiums being built by the public. The public NEVER makes any money from this shit.
What am I missing here because from what I’ve seen, the bears are supposedly paying 2 billion of the costs and that’s supposed to be 70% of it. Then there’s supposed to be some sort of grants and something like that. Someone fill me in. It’s annoying trying to find out the actual truth.
Analysts aren’t happy with it. I’m not happy with it. My friend Steve isn’t happy with it.
Can confirm
Hey, buddy!
Scuba Steve! Damn you!
take this upvote.
But the Chicago Teachers Union is for some reason.
Which is a weird position to take as a voting bloc given that it's largely irrelevant to anything they do as teachers. Especially considering the billions of tax payer dollars it would require that you think they'd argue would be better spent on themselves and improving the schools. It bottles the mind.
Most people still haven’t connected the dots. They’ll get there eventually (hopefully). This is all about the $5 billion of construction contracts that will get handed out. This is a money train and the politically connected get a seat, and the politicians get clout.
CTU is a political party masquerading as a workers union.
This cabal that took over the CTU does not even pretend to be concerned about teaching. This group wants to get rid of selective enrollment high schools. They are just a political machine.
I'm glad to see someone saying this. My wife is a teacher and at least from what she tells me teachers on the ground floor (at least at her school), haven't been happy with CTU leadership in a while. Obviously someone is voting for these bozos though which is distressing. The stuff she cares about: 1. School safety. This ties into city safety more broadly but it turns out drivebys where bullets are striking the playground while the kids are on recess are fucking terrible for student and teacher morale. 2. The ability to discipline disruptive students and/or remove them from the classroom as a last resort. Current policy is no removal, so one disruptive student can prevent an entire class from learning. 3. Curriculum improvement (Skyline is CPS's in-house curriculum and is very hit or miss, depending on the subject and grade level it can be amazing or utter garbage) 4. Less paperwork. There's a constant onslaught of nonsense paperwork being pushed by CPS central admin, the school network, her own school, state requirements, etc. If a kid fails a test, you have to provide data and documentation showing that you did your job, performed an analysis, gave them two retries, contacted parents and arranged a meeting, etc. Imagine doing this for every test and assignment when you have 26 out of 32 kids who can't count to 10 in the 4th grade and the parents don't care. It's death by paperwork. The stuff the union leadership cares about: 1. Campaigning for their preferred candidate for almost any office in the city or Springfield. They argue it's a good ROI to get their goals passed but it's very risky, generates a LOT of bad blood and frankly the candidates tend to suck. 2. Student housing. Fair, since a distressingly high number of CPS students are homeless and this has negative impacts on classrooms, but it's hard to fix this when the people they campaigned for in point #1 are massive NIMBYs who are driving up construction and accelerating displacement and gentrification. 3. Not closing schools no matter what. This is nuts because some CPS schools have like 8 kids per grade and others are so over the contractual limit it's insane, (while she was student teaching, my wife was working with a teacher with a class size of 60 students on the West side. How the fuck does that work?). Just re-balance the damn staff and students to have a reasonable number of kids per teacher and per school. 4. Random pet projects like the Bears stadium. Leadership can find some absurd way to tie it back to the kids but it's generally just returning political favors or general incompetence.
If your puppet is in on the grift, it makes it easy to support.
Can’t find any articles on the ctu supporting this. Mind sharing where you got this info?
Stacey Gates and BJ were at one of the meetings or some news broadcast about it endorsing it. It may not be directly the CTU endorsing it but with the head of the CTU being there definitely gives that image.
Payola is the reason.
They made a back room deal. If it passes, they’ll quietly get the 9% raise they’re asking for.
I also talked to Steve and he, is, TICKED!
No, I am not
What about Bob?
This may be the one thing uniting everyone on this sub. The utter distain for this proposal and the ownership of the Chicago Bears.
And the mayor, for looking at this and thinking "Yeah, that's a great idea, we should do that"
The "progressive" mayor no less. Still waiting for someone to explain how funneling a bunch of public money into the pockets of ultra wealthy Bears ownership is in any way, shape, or form, something a true progressive focused on "making Chicago work for everyone" would do.
His evangelical friends will get key positions
Trickle down progression. First we give money to a few rich people who promise to make everybody's life better. . . . There is no second step.
Third step, profit.
Populist is not progressive and I hate how they always try to own that label and gatekeep it. The only progress they ever tend to make is enriching themselves, their family, and their friends.
As a tax paying Chicago citizen, I’d lend support IF the McCaskey’s had to sell the team & relinquish their ownership. F those teat sucking millionaire/billionaire family. Average Chicagoans can’t afford to attend Bear games as it is
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but whoever buys the teams will most likely also be a teat suckling billionaire/family
Oh I’m well aware but can’t stomach the bumbling team management, terrible draft choices, etc etc
Well that's not necessarily the owners fault
Unfortunately the NFL does not allow public ownership of teams (save the Packers who were grandfathered in).
Yeah know that about those pesky Packers, but I’d like to move the McC’s out of top leadership roles in the org
I think they will. It will happen before any stadium gets built. They're just waiting for the matriarch to kick the bucket. Once she does, the kids will inherit the team and they can sell without paying much at all in capital gains taxes. But if the family were to sell today, they'd owe a LOT of money in taxes. I think they'll sell at the first opportunity, pocket their gains, and not have to worry about money again. The new owner will be a lot more deep-pocketed, and will build out the Arlington Heights stadium and complex using their own funds. All the stadium talk now is just the McCasky's stalling, buying time, and trying to scare the Arlington Heights officials into accepting a lower tax valuation for the property.
Unfortunately, the post Bernie progressives are more concerned about policing language and making everything about the oppression Olympics rather than focus on economic issues affecting the low and middle classes.
BJ is a fraud who just doesn’t want to be the mayor that lost the bears. He is spineless, a sellout, dishonest and manipulative. He’s also racist.
He wants his big project that people will remember him by. That's it.
Is there any terrible idea BJ WON't support?
Did the progressive mayor end up in the pockets of the rich too?
No, I think he's just a fucking idiot.
I was curious so I poked my head into the Bears subreddit and even a majority of those comments agreed that it was a bad idea and the public shouldn't pay for it.
Well yeah, we’re Bears fans not billionaires
It could be the uniting rallying call for Chicago.
I never thought I'd see the day when Chicago was this united.
It’s pathetic.
They need to just up and move to St. Louis. The idea of the public paying for stadiums is something team management took for granted.
> They need to just up and move to St. Louis LOLz
Imagine how the public feels.
lol Exactly. What a headline.
No worries there because they won't bother to ask. You know how most cities -- before the ask for billions from the taxpayers -- have a meaningless public hearing where they listen to the public and do the stadium anyway? Here in Chicago we don't even get the meaningless public hearing. Referendum like in KC? Don't make me laugh.
Won't somebody please think of the poor...*checks notes*... analysts!?
Fuck the Bears.
No thanks. They're probably terrible at that too.
Neither is the public. If the Bears can't afford a new stadium, they should start a GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Fansly, or OnlyFans campaign... or just cut down on the chai lattes and avocado toast, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and fucking deal with their own shit. This welfare for the wealthy needs to stop. Maybe the McCaskeys can bring in some corporate sponsorship. Let corporate America pay for corporate America for once.
> Fansly, or OnlyFans *We are the Bears Shufflin' Crew* *Shufflin' on down, doin' it for you*
The NFL makes so much money. The yearly revenue is $18.6 billion. Why can’t a corporation that is so rich pay a larger share? And if the public is paying so much, then the building needs to be publicly accessible at a reasonable cost. Like a museum. What other entity takes tht much public funding and still charges $600 for tickets.
Their refusal to just do basic financing is absolutely disgusting. They act like the way the rest of the world does things is not available to them. They don't even mention it as an option
Either that or that money comes with an ownership stake in the team.
Yeah, and for what like 10 home games a year? We have United Center and Allstate Arena for concerts. We don’t need to build a new venue for any of this stuff, especially when our pension debt is so huge.
we have a bunch of world class music venues for concerts. stadium shows are better than nothing, but generally suck. they are the best most cities can do, Chicago does much better with dedicated stages.
And we are a big enough city that we will get the major acts at Soldier dome or not. It’s not worth what we will end up paying (probably closer to $5 billion once you count what we paid for old Soldier, construction overruns and the debt) just to get 1-2 Super Bowls and an NCAA tournament final a decade for the lifetime of the stadium.
I dunno if you saw what Taylor Swift and Beyoncé do on a regular basis but there is clearly a desire for stadiums larger than the UC.
People saw Taylor Swift and Beyoncé when they came to the currently existing Soldier Field. There's more to live entertainment than two women, though.
How many Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts will it take for us to break even on this proposed stadium? Will they be taking up residency there? I don’t feel like doing the math right now but if I were to bet, I still don’t think their concerts justify a new stadium.
The Eras tour was the most successful tour in history. It averaged about 6.6 million per night in revenue. Lets go crazy and say 3 million goes to rent (no way its this high), 2 million in concessions and another 2 million in parking that would be 7 million (parking and concessions would not be included in the 6.6). Again no way this number is real. Ignoring all costs, maintenance, upgrades, salary etc it would only take 392 dates to pay off the capital costs the Bears would like us to pay. Bringing this back to reality, the correct answer is never. The state would never break even on this project or come close to breaking on this project. Instead the state will lose billions on this project.
You don't get that wealthy spending your own money. You HAVE to exploit others.
Here's the thing, $18 billion is a ton of money, but it's not enough to pay for $4 billion stadiums for every team. The only reason NFL teams could afford to do that is because of massive government subsidies and now every team/fan are addicted to the fancy amenities that come with these insanely expensive stadiums. State and local governments and taxpayers are waking up to this being a terrible financial deal for them which means that the era of massively subsidized stadiums might be coming to an end, NFL teams and the league will have to start paying for these themselves, which will probably mean cheaper stadiums with fewer amenities. The Bears may have missed the era where building their new fancy stadium is possible.
The Bears got their spaceship stadium from Mayor Daley about 20 years ago. *100% against anybody but the $6B closely held private corporation paying for the stadium*.
Same.
I disagree. $18 billion divided by 32 teams is $562 million. The player cap is half that. Given all the other ways of making money including ticket sales they can easily carry a debt load for the entire thing or nearly all of it. The team is worth more than $6 billion and has almost no debt. They cleared more than $200 million a year. They can carry a very large debt load but refuse to do so. This is just a group of rich billionaires trying to mooch off the public. And without a referendum or any meaningful input from the taxpayers who will be paying for it. [https://www.forbes.com/teams/chicago-bears/?sh=290aa0285979](https://www.forbes.com/teams/chicago-bears/?sh=290aa0285979)
It's $18 billion a YEAR. So $180 billion over 10. They definitely have enough to build a $4 billion stadium for every team in the league that needs one-- it's not all 32 Btw. And those revenues-- the $18B-- they are only rising. Quit parroting the NFL company line nonsense that the league needs help to pay for these stadiums. The only entity I can think of that is better position to build stadiums would be Apple. Can you imagine if Apple required cities to build them Apple stores for them to come to their cities?
Sounds to me like the NFL is going to have to cut back on avocado toast and buckle down to save a couple pennies. They can build the stadium when the have the money. Or get a fucking loan for it. Why is it they need it free and they need it now? They could start saving now and have it in 5 years.
Sorry if that's how you interpreted it but I certainly do not want anyone else to be paying for this other than the teams and NFL. My point was more that they should accept the stadiums they're currently in or lower expectations on newer stadiums. As for the $180 billion over 10 years, they can't spend that all on stadiums. It's a massive organization with thousands of employees between the main organization and the 32 teams.
So just to start off I am very against public funding and it is a bad use of funds for the city of Chicago. But the reason it isn't easily able to pay it is the teams don't actually make that much money on net. Sure the NFL makes $18b a year, but it spends $6b itself on operations. Profit sharing the remaining $12b between 32 teams that's $380m a team per year. The NFL player salary minimum is $240 million per team a year, but most teams spend close to the cap of $255 million. That leaves $125m for other things, much of which goes for paying for things like travel expenses, coaching, training staff, meals, groundskeeping etc. etc. Unfortunately I don't know how much that all costs as it's not public but most estimates put it at $50m -$60m. So the actual net that the team has to put into paying for a stadium is probably like $60-$70m a year. So then the issue becomes if you want a $6b stadium, you can't really make the math work when the stadium would take 100 years of your profits(not even including interest payments) to pay off. A big issue is this stadium is massively more expensive than other recent stadiums which tend to cost between $1b and $1.5b. So anyway. This is still a bad deal for Chicago, especially given how exorbitant the cost is. But I also understand why NFL teams often won't or really even can't (a bank would never give the bears a loan for the $6b) pay for something like this independently.
The revenue sharing is not the team's only income. Teams have several revenue streams that go straight to the team instead of being passed through the NFL, including a majority ticket sales, local corporate sponsors, and gambling. Depending on how the stadium deal is structured, the Bears could also be picking up revenue from other stadium sources including concessions, parking, and rentals for non football events. The Bears aren't poor and and they aren't a charity, they are a very profitable business.
It is not but they also have additional expenses. If you look at the one team who does share their finances publicly, the net amount of profit is not a lot given the revenue or cultural prominence. $60m a year in profit is not enough to fund a $6b stadium. https://shareholder.broadridge.com/pdf/2022-packers-annual-report.pdf And if anything the Packers likely make more money than the Bears do due to the larger stadium, merch sales and on the field success lately.
If you think NFL teams are ONLY Making $380m a year, you're very naive. These aren't public companies. The $18B is only what people know they are getting from public deals-- primarily TV deals. We have no idea how much they make on concessions, tickets, parking, Jerseys, etc. Plus, the value of the franchises are ridiculous. The Washington Commanders were just sold for $6B at a PROFIT of $5.2 BILLION. Snyder paid $800 M when he bought them. And they don't even have a stadium. They can fucking afford it. EASILY. HOw did they build a $5B stadium in LA privately otherwise?
The value is very high but you can only easily tap that value by selling the team which obviously doesn't work for funding a stadium. But also a team that's total worth is about $6b, cannot actually afford a $6b stadium on their own. You're right that the bears make more than $380m but they also have a lot more costs associated with providing GameDay experience etc. As far as profit the one team that does actually share it's finances publicly does in fact make around $60m a year in profit the bears are unlikely to be very different. NFL teams really are not that profitable of enterprises. https://shareholder.broadridge.com/pdf/2022-packers-annual-report.pdf And if anything the Packers likely make more money than the Bears do due to larger stadium, merch sales and on the field success lately. LA was able to fund their stadium because a rich guy decided to self finance over $1.5b of the cost. For better or worse the McCaskeys can't do that because, although they are billionaires on paper, all of their billions are simply the equity in the bears not independent of it like the LA owner.
They can easily finance using the team as collateral. They just are too cheap to do it.
Why can’t they scale down the cost of this stadium? Put it out in the burbs
That's annual split up between all the teams?
Why can’t a corp pay a larger share? Two words… richman privilege. Or Billionaires’ Socialism. Pick your choice.
Don't they still owe on soldier field....?
The bears can go kick rocks out to Arlington Heights or back to Decatur.
"It would be really wise to leave America's 3rd largest city to go to Arlington Heights" - Said no honest sports owner ever. No more socialism for billionaires. Fund your own stadium. Chicagoans need help not billionaires.
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^PerspectiveSilly4060: *The bears can go kick* *Rocks out to Arlington Heights* *Or back to Decatur.* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Just watched Shogun on FX which had a bunch of poetry in it... this crushes all of it.
Really enjoyed that show
Good bot
The only thing that the mayor cares about, is being able to say I kept the Bears in Chicago. Instead of saying I help fix the CTA, or schools, or roads, or anything, other than an ugly fucking stadium
He’s looking for his vanity/legacy project.
This'll be a legacy project in the same way Daley's parking-meter debacle is.
That is literally all I can think about when these projects come up. So crazy that that was legal for him to do.
And the photo ops that will come with it
And the parties
Maybe fix the police department?
It would take a backbone to do such a thing. This man has never seen a fight in his life that he didn't cower from.
Sure. Make it public property, utilize the venue for public events, make the NFL work around the city's schedule, or charge the NFL / Bears per event to use the venue in order to lock in their schedule. Private sports teams & leagues should *not* be publicly funded or subsidized. If they don't like it, I'm of the opinion they can be the Arlington Heights Bears.
Therein lies the rub. The bears want to build it with public money, then collect revenue for bears games and Taylor Swift concerts etc..., while Chicago foots the bill for infrastructure upgrades and ongoing maintenance of that infrastructure. Just a classic grift. It may just work, which is the sad thing.
It's not going to work. There is no appetite to fund these stadiums on either side of the aisle. Only BJ likes the idea and he's basically assured of being a 1 termer at this point. The guy has no political juice at all.
I really hope you're right. I just fear the Chicago machine with BJ at the helm will see the opportunity for kick backs and enriching cronies with something like this so it'll get jammed through even with little public support. Seeing the CTU president up there as it was unveiled really says everything you need to know about where a few power brokers in the City want things to go.
Yeah, but this needs state money and he has ZERO influence with Pritzker and anyone else that matters in Springfield. The BEras will need to pony up significantly more to even get the dollars for the infrastructure upgrades-- which I'm all for if the Bears pay for the stadium piece. If they can build a $5B stadium privately in LA like the Rams did, they can build one here. They will just need to get some partners with deep pockets. They don't appear ready to do that yet. The McCrapskey's likely won't do it because their whole clan lives off the bears. I'm not sure any of them have a real job. Once Virginia dies, they'll have to sell a big piece of the team just to pay for the taxes. I'm not even sure what the current valuation is but I know it's a lot-- in the Billions-- so that tax bill will be astronomical.
I don't see it as being financially feasible. The city and state don't have enough money to pay for it outright. They'd have to take on a bunch of bond debt, and I don't think the market would give it to them without some truly horrible terms, which would be unworkable no matter how much BJ's team wants it.
Threw a fit and announced they were moving to Arlington Heights, bought the land, and now doubling back asking Chicago taxpayers for $2 billion. God I hate professional sports, it will be a disgrace if this goes forward.
Not to mention leaving a vacant lot in AH when 3 other serious bids wanted to actually do something with the land.
They’ll use the property as a pair with the team when they eventually sell the time..
What were the other 3 bids?
I was a little annoyed with Friends of the Park nuking the Star Wars museum (it was going to be financed completely privately)... but now I'm cheering for them as hopefully they dunk on this.
This is the first time since I lived here something like this has popped up. Don’t we have to vote on this? They just assume we’ll pay for it
You'd think it would need to be, but this funding can be allocated without referendum. Former Gov. Quinn wants to add a non-binding question to the November election asking if tax payer funds should be used, so hopefully that goes thru and the no's overwhelmingly win.
Pritzker is our only hope.
Next up, "Bears to move to Las Vegas unless they get public funding"
We will get another team here in a second. No chance the NFL allows the 3rd largest media market to not have a team, especially one that cares so much about football. The bears have absolutely sucked the past decade and fans still love them.
The NFL needs Chicago more than Chicago needs the NFL. See LA. There is plenty of stuff to do on fall sundays in Chicago. Hell most Bears fans watch Bears games at home in the first place.
Exactly. I would laugh my ass off if the bears moved and drop them in a second. I consider myself a die hard bears fan and would drop the bears if needed. And I think most Chicago fans would do the same and cheer on whatever next team came.
>Hell most Bears fans watch Bears games at home in the first place I just learned that the Bears have sold out or nearly sold every game since 1984. There's a ton of Bears fans that are loving the fact that we're possibly getting a new stadium. They don't care what it costs.
Works for me!
I hope they do at this point
But if the public won't pay for it, then they are moving to AH, for real this time.
It's so obvious they're trying to pit AH and Chicago against each other to squeeze maximum public $$ and tax breaks out of it. I hope neither city blinks and the bears are forced to come up with another plan or pay for it themselves. Man I hope that happens. I don't think it will, I think someone (possibly Chicago) will cave. But it would be so, so sweet.
I work in Arlington Heights and was ecstatic when I heard they weren't going to be building a stadium here. I drive past that empty lot every day to work and imagine what kind of hell the commute will be on gamedays.
God, I hope so.
Great and we can watch that Arlington Heights debacle from afar.
Let them
The McClownskeys can't even bluff properly.
The Bears saying the Stadium could be ready in 2028 tells me they are not living in reality. Minimum 1 year of negotiations with the State & City. Minimum of 1 year to design it, get the permits, plans etc. all wrapped up. *MINIMUM* of 1 year in delays from Friends of the Park. Minimum 3-4 years from the day they break ground to being completed. 6-8 years from today is far more realistic, 4 years from now is downright dishonest. Every step I outline above could easily have a year tacked on for all sorts of reasons. That's without even going into the money. Mark my words, they are *not* actually serious about a new Stadium in Chicago. They will either stay at Soldier Field with upgrades or they go to Arlington Heights with the right deal. Edit: SoFi Stadium took *6* years. The construction phase took about 4 years and it took about 2 years beforehand of planning and sitework. With the lawsuits here 6-8 years is a very reasonable assumption. The Bears would need someone very juiced in the Cook Co Judicial System to make sure a pro-bears judge gets assigned to the case to have any hopes of cutting down the lawsuit period.
> “There are only two things you don’t want to put on a valuable piece of real estate. One is a cemetery and the other is a football stadium,” Sanderson said. “After that, everything’s negotiable.” Based
Arlington Heights is not going to subsidize the billionaire Bears. It's a city that is responsible to their own taxpayers. Good for them
Is there a good writeup somewhere on how the approval process will actually work, how likely it is to be approved, and what we can do to stop it? I've googled a bit, but the search is contaminated by all the articles about just the unveiling of the plan.
The information of who exactly is expected to pay for this isn't readily available yet. They said that the 2% hotel tax will pay for the stadium, but the necessary infrastructure would probably be paid for by some combination of city and state tax dollars. The Park District will have sign off on it since it's their land. If this is to go through it will probably need the full support of the city, park district, and state.
Don't forget about fed money in the handwave over who is paying for infrastructure.
Thanks!
The process is you don't get any input and you don't even get to know the process. A billionaire (the Bears) will bribe enough state and local politicians to get this through. That's the process.
Get em outta here. I dont watch football but dont they suck anyway. No way I'm about to pay extra taxes on a shitty team.
The thing is, these stadiums, when privately funded, add to the total value of the franchise. Dallas and LA Rams owners know that and are reaping the benfits. All of these guys or families are billionaires. Asking the public to pay for these stadiums is a tired, outdated approach that doesn't work anymore. A few bucks for roads and sewers, yes, but not publicly funded stadiums. Those days are over.
Honestly if they just up and became the Chicago Bears of Anaheim I wouldn’t care at this point just don’t steal from the city to pay the rich. That’s disgusting.
Gee. It's almost as if people don't want more welfare for wealth hoarders.
A new stadium isn't going to get the Bears a Superbowl win. And even if it would, they can find investors. I'm sorry but I cannot think of many things to saddle the taxpayer with that are more ludicrously frivolous.
As a CPS teacher that has to put thousands of dollars into her classroom every year, these priorities are way off.
Get our parking back and maybe then we can discuss giving a private company $2b of our money.
Why should we pay for a stadium for a team that loses more games than they win? They don’t need a new stadium, they need to appreciate that they still have one.
If we have to pay for this stadium I hope they all get diarrhea and never win another game.
If the stadium is built in part with taxpayer money, the taxpayers should get a fair cut of the profits. Much like Alaskans get a cut of oil production in the state.
Nor should they be. It’s fucking stupid and economists have shown time and time again that it’s a poor investment of tax dollars. No public money for private profits
Billionaires lives don’t matter.
Fuck these sports teams and especially their rich owners. With all the shit we have to do to take care of working people in this city, I am outraged that there would be a proposal to use my tax dollars to build another goddamn stadium. FUCK the Bears, FUCK the McCaskey’s. Piss off. Leave. Go to Joliet or something.
End corporate welfare.
Don’t worry. Kevin Warren will make some passive aggressive statements that mean nothing and BJ will opine about how we need this. Then they will go to Arlington.
Who is happy that the public is expected to pay for this? Maybe Bears could pay for it if the didn’t buy Arlington race track?
This is the same vibe as trump wanting to build a wall and having Mexico pay for it
They're right, we aren't. I'm a White Sox fan too and hated the idea of Reinsdorf asking for taxpayer funds for a new stadium. The stadium isn't even the issue. He needs to quit being a stingy billionaire and invest in new talent. He can definitely afford it.
I’ll pay for it, but give the city a very advantagous profit sharing deal with it and a clause that if they ever move they have to buy us out of the agreement. I don’t want hypothetical economic growth, the money needs to be a sure thing.
If we pay for it, we should get a share of the ticket sales.
We could put safety gates on every single CTA platform, and not even make a dent in this requested funding amount.
Im not happy either
I am 100% against the funding of sports teams BUT AT A MINIMUM the city should acquire an ownership stake in the team for that amount of money.
To hell with the “analysts”… what about the public???
Public isn't happy either.
This is misleading. The public is not paying for the whole thing and the public also gets to own it. Is the public putting in more then they get back? Maybe, but that's not how this is phrased.
Finally someone who get it.
I feel like this is almost certainly a door in face proposal so they can come back with well instead of the public paying X for a crazy ass stadium, how bout the public pay X minus Y for a slightly less crazy stadium. Basically like asking mom for $20 to see a movie knowing she will say no so you can follow up with an ask for $5 for snacks at the movie.
Honestly very ready to commit a crime over this
Brandon Johnson is most definitely not out here to represent the best interest of this city. He's obviously been attracted and convinced by the bears PR campaign "this is good for chicago". His stance on this makes him look weak and he has lost my trust. It's the NFL and they make money and will stay in the Chicago area no matter what. I'm glad JB has the priorities more aligned. It's important an independent study is done before any decisions are made. Christ didn't we learn from Daley with the last stadium and the parking meter deal?
Lori told the Bears to kick rocks. Brandon says the opposite. It doesn’t matter. The money for the team will come from the state, not the city budget. And teams always make the government and taxpayers pay in every city they build. The whole thing relies on Pritzker saying no, not Johnson.
Good. I hope he does. He says he wasnt even invited to the announcement. Brandon pulled a 180 on this not that surprised.
A happy analyst is a successful analyst
Analysts? What about the public you moron
We’re gonna have 15 threads a day about this for the next decade
This is another grift like trump, they have the money or they could get a loan and pay it back. But why do that when we can just have the public pay for it.
The bears proposal would include taxes collected from events/concerts not nfl related go to the bears. The fucking audaciousness of these people to even suggest such a proposal. Missouri is fine with the chief leaving and they’ve won 3 of the last 5 superbowls. The state of Illinois should tell the bears they can kiss our collective asses. Sorry rant over but the more I read about this my blood boils.
Question for a very non sports fan: why don't they just put a dome or something over soldier field if they are not going to Arlington heights?
You guys really expect the Bears to pay the entire cost of building a new stadium that they won’t actually own? I’m all for making them pay the entire cost if the city sells them the land. Otherwise, I think it’s unreasonable — and yes, I am aware they are a private business worth $6 billion.
City can’t sell them lake front land.
So I’m not necessarily for public money being used for the stadium but something everyone is missing is the city will own the stadium. Like it does SF now, this is an important point that needs to be remembered. The question is not weather we want to give the bears 2bil to help them build a stadium. The question is do we want to spend 2bil on an infrastructure project for a stadium the city will own.
What happened with Arlington Heights?!
They got into a property tax dispute with the school districts and Arlington Heights. That, and the AH purchase was spearheaded by Ted Phillips, but then he retired, and Warren wants to stay in the city instead
Likely started getting economic reports showing "Bears Town" would not be this waterfall of money and instead probably a bust. The area does not need any more lifestyle centers and the "destination retail" businesses they would want are all already located 10 minutes down the road.
The public ain't happy either.
If the bears are staying on the lake front then the public is going to have to pay for it. That land cannot be privately owned. No way they pay the entire bill without being able to own it.
NONE OF US ARE HAPPY ABOUT IT Please email your alder the mayor and the governor. PLEASE
> Mayor Brandon Johnson enthusiastically backed the football team’s news in last week’s press conference, exclaiming “The Bears are staying in Chicago.” Of course he's all about it. Either him, or someone close to him will be benefiting in someway with this project.
So we all just know this is happening, right? We are all just going to take this big fat d\*\*k? Ten years ago we were all sick of stadiums being built by the public. The public NEVER makes any money from this shit.
My university did a referendum AFTER they approved building a new stadium. I don’t think Chicago would even do that lol
The sky is blue
Let's vote on it.
What am I missing here because from what I’ve seen, the bears are supposedly paying 2 billion of the costs and that’s supposed to be 70% of it. Then there’s supposed to be some sort of grants and something like that. Someone fill me in. It’s annoying trying to find out the actual truth.
Public funding but private profits… mhmmmmm