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LAKE FOREST, Ill. — Chicago Bears chairman George McCaskey and president/CEO Kevin Warren provided an update on the organization’s stadium situation Thursday, with Warren maintaining that the team’s “sole focus” is working toward a new stadium in Hammond, Ind.
There remains no timeline for deciding on a stadium location or a date to break ground; however, Warren said the team has completed its due diligence on the Lost Marsh site in Hammond and is currently doing due diligence on another site in Hammond at the Wolf Lake Terminal.
“While we were working on the Lost Marsh site, we discovered a potentially new site that could even be as good or better than the Lost Marsh site,” Warren said. “So we’re in the middle of that due diligence.”
Warren said that the team is not pivoting to the Wolf Lake Terminal site but looking into bringing both together “from a mixed-use standpoint.”
The Bears first expressed the possibility of building a stadium in northwest Indiana last December via an open letter from Warren released days before a Week 16 game against the Green Bay Packers.
Days after the Illinois legislature failed to pass the P.I.L.O.T. bill in late May, which would have created what the Bears have described as property tax certainty, the franchise’s board of directors voted to “advance our stadium development project in Hammond.” The team owns a 326-acre property in Arlington Heights, Ill, that had previously been the focus of its search.
“We felt we had presented a pretty compelling case that a stadium in Arlington would be beneficial not only for the Village of Arlington Heights but for the community and for the entire state really,” McCaskey said. “Tremendous driver of economic activity. Job creation. Tax revenue. Sales revenue. Ultimately, that argument was unsuccessful.”
Warren said they have had “occasional” meetings with Illinois lawmakers. McCaskey categorized discussion with in-state officials as “minimal.”
“We’ve been very clear the last couple years the things that we’ve always needed is property tax certainty, we need infrastructure certainty, that’s what we’ve needed,” Warren said. “So that has not changed. There’s some other things associated with it, but I don’t know why (Illinois lawmakers), as far as what you said, (have) hit a snag.
“One of the good things about what we’ve had is since we did have the board decision, we have really focused on Indiana,” Warren said. “That’s where our time and energy and effort has been spent and we’ve had extremely productive meetings there and feel really good about what’s going on with the state of Indiana, specifically Hammond.”
The Bears have played their home games at Soldier Field since 1971. They purchased the Arlington Park property in 2021 with the intent to build a stadium and mixed-use development in Arlington Heights. In spring 2024, they announced plans to build a stadium on the Museum Campus downtown, adjacent to Soldier Field. By spring 2025, they had shifted focus back to Arlington Heights.
Thursday offered the latest update since the team said it pivoted to Indiana in the spring.
While the Hammond sites are just over the state border, McCaskey said he understands the stress from fans about a move to Indiana.
“This is going to require an adjustment,” he said. “It required an adjustment when we went from Wrigley to Soldier; it required an adjustment when we went from Soldier to Champaign temporarily. It required an adjustment when we came back to the ‘new’ Soldier Field. That’s how it works over the course of 100 years plus of franchise stewardship.”
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