LAKE FOREST, Ill. (WGN) — While most eyes and ears were tuned into the search for the next head coach of the Chicago Bears Tuesday, President Kevin Warren and team chairman George McCaskey answered a slew of questions that offered insight on where they are in their quest for a new stadium.
“No, it’s not taking too long. These things take time,” McCaskey said. “We’re making progress and we’re looking forward to a good result.”
Warren reiterated they remain focused on keeping the team in Chicago, but progress in the northwest suburbs has kept the old Arlington International Racecourse property as a viable option.
“So, the status is downtown still remains the focus, the museum campus. I feel that we’ve made a massive amount of momentum,” Warren said at Halas Hall. “Again, I’ve been here 20 months and we’ve made great progress. But, along those lines, we have 326 acres of beautiful land in Arlington Heights. It’s a fantastic piece of property.
“We were able to get the memorandum of understanding done there so, optionality, it does exist, but I remain steadfast that the goal we have is shovels in the ground in 2025. I’m confident it will happen.”
The Village of Arlington Heights Board of Trustees unanimously approved a tentative property tax deal brokered between the Chicago Bears and three local school districts back on Dec. 9.
Three days later, Palatine Township Elementary School District 15, Township High School District 214 and Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211 all approved the deal, which officially resolved the property tax dispute that previously existed between the Bears and the three school districts.
When it comes to concrete evidence of progress being made, Warren pointed toward the day-to-day minutiae of planning to build a new stadium as the momentum he spoke of, even though it didn’t offer any physical (or visible) example of progress.
“We have stadium meetings every single day. From a political standpoint, from a business standpoint, these things are massive projects. I’ve been here before in Minnesota,” Warren said. “This is not like buying a house where you go and find it and put a deposit down and then you close it a certain day. It’s so many things that come together.
“I think that you’ll see as we get into the spring and summer, you’ll start seeing some of the progress I’m talking about now. I feel the momentum is really moving in the right direction and from a stadium standpoint, we’re right exactly where I thought we would be.”
Warren represented the Vikings newest ownership group, the Wilf Family, when they purchased the team for $600 million in 2005. He was hired as Minnesota’s executive vice president of legal affairs and chief administrative officer shortly after the acquisition.
In 2015, the Vikings promoted Warren to chief operating officer. As COO, Warren oversaw Minnesota’s stadium development plan and played a key role in selecting designers, developers, legal advisors and arranging an interim location for the Vikings to play at — TCF Bank Stadium — as U.S. Bank Stadium was built.
The Vikings franchise provided $477 million of the $1.13 billion it cost to build the stadium. The State of Minnesota paid $348 million and put forward another $150 million funded by a hospitality tax levied in Minneapolis.
The City of Minneapolis was estimated to pay a total of $678 million to help build the stadium, including financing costs, over the 30-year life of the stadium, which would cover operations and construction costs.
According to Minnesota’s Department of Management and Budget (MMB), the state paid off all $377 million in outstanding public debt on bonds issued for the development of U.S. Bank Stadium on June 26, 2023, 20 years ahead of schedule.
“Paying off the stadium debt early will save taxpayers about $226 million in total interest payments,” MMB Commissioner Jim Schowalter said at the time. “Going forward, it will also free up some $150 million in annual receipts from pull tabs for other important state projects.”
Warren, who was hired on Jan. 12, 2023 as the Bears’ team president and chief executive officer after spending four years as commissioner of the Big Ten Conference, led a presentation of a plan to build a new stadium along the lakefront in April 2024.
A week after the Bears unveiled the plan, Governor JB Pritzker called it a “non-starter” because of the plan’s significant inclusion of public funding.
A new stadium along the lakefront is estimated to cost at least $4.5 billion, with $2.3 billion coming via public financing, according to the Chicago Tribune.
“As the Governor has said, the current proposal is a non-starter for the state,” Pritzker’s press secretary, Alex Gough, said in a May 2024 statement. “In order to subsidize a brand-new stadium for a privately owned sports team, the governor would need to see a demonstrable and tangible benefit to the taxpayers of Illinois.
“The Governor’s Office remains open to conversations with the Bears, lawmakers and other stakeholders, with the understanding that responsible fiscal stewardship of tax-payer dollars remains the foremost priority.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has expressed public support for the Bears building a new stadium along the lakefront.
“This is going to reinvigorate the entire City of Chicago,” Johnson said in June 2024. “It will be the crown jewel of the City of Chicago.”
The Mayor of Chicago said he’s worked closely with Warren to ensure that a new stadium project would include both large-scale investment from the Bears and result in facilities that benefit the entire community.
“What I’ve said from the very beginning is that an investment like this requires real skin in the game from ownership, which they’ve done that,” Johnson said at the time. “A commitment to public use, they’ve done that, as well as an overall committee to building a better, stronger, safer Chicago.”
While the back-and-forth between the Bears, Illinois, Chicago and Arlington Heights continues, Warren said their ongoing search for a new head coach will not impact the Bears’ pursuit of building a new stadium, but whoever that hire ends up being will impact the franchise for decades.
“This is my life. Fortunately, I have a wife [and] we’ve been married coming up on 34 years. She’s grown up in this business. My kids grew up in this business. I have adult kids,” Warren said. “The Chicago Bears are my life and so, I spend so much time here anyway.
“The thing, I said it in December and I’ll say it again today, this decision on our head football coach will impact the trajectory of this franchise for the next ten, 15, 20 years. We have to get this right and I’m confident that we will.”