Joe Ferguson, president of the Civic Federation, a fiscal watchdog group, told the Chicago Tribune in a recent interview that the Bears and Sox need to show vetted cost and revenue projections.

“Everybody wants to keep the teams (in the city) — the question is, on what terms?” he said. “There’s not a lot of information necessary to say one of these (plans) actually is viable, or whether it’s a way to take us to the cleaners when we’re already carrying hundreds of millions of dollars of debt for the last time we did something like this.”

The city recently went through a similar scenario, he said, when it chose the Bally’s casino for development, only to find the project is already being scaled back and has funding issues.

“I think Gov. Pritzker has spoken to this exactly right, with a real wariness about public funding of sports stadiums,” Ferguson said. “We need to see reliable, thorough revenue projections for this before we can even open the conversation.”

Making the situation more precarious, Ferguson said, is that all levels of government are facing financial cliffs in multiple areas — pensions, transit and Chicago Public Schools — with the end of billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 pandemic money.

Sports economist J.C. Bradbury, voicing a common concern among economists, said whatever public money is earmarked for the stadium would be better spent on other public projects, or returned to taxpayers.

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” Bradbury said. “The Bears aren’t going to leave one of the most iconic football markets in the country. Tell the Bears to pay for their own damn stadium, and if they don’t like it, to go jump in Lake Michigan.”

The team has taken a long, strange trip to get to this point. In 2022, officials agreed to buy the former Arlington International Racecourse for $197 million, closing on the deal last year. Under prior President and CEO Ted Phillips, the team made an elaborate presentation of its plans for a $5 billion mixed-used development on the 326-acre site, with an enclosed stadium, housing and entertainment.

But since Warren became team president and CEO last year, the team has been unable to reach an agreement over property taxes with local schools in the Arlington Heights area.

As the Minnesota Vikings did when Warren was an executive there, the Bears reversed course from a suburban stadium site to downtown. Warren has extolled the beauty and energy of the city, talked of his rapport with Mayor Brandon Johnson, and has said the lakefront is the “ideal location.”

“Absolutely we can build something that would be magnificent downtown,” he said.

The team wouldn’t necessarily have to move right away, with a lease at Soldier Field through 2033. But Warren has talked about the importance of momentum in getting the stadium project done. State lawmakers are scheduled to meet until May 24, then have a veto session in the fall, and a brief lame-duck session in the new year.

Reconstructing the museum campus around a new Bears stadium could help attract new residential and retail development along the lakefront, replacing some of the tax revenue lost by the declining property values of downtown office towers, said Eric Feinberg, vice chairman and co-head of the Chicago region for Savills, a commercial real estate firm.

If the Bears’ proposal improves lakefront access with better public transportation with new gathering spaces, it’s possible the new stadium district will attract families year-round, not just on a handful of Sundays.

Feinberg said he still doesn’t understand why the Bears didn’t settle disagreements with Arlington Heights’ officials before buying the former Churchill Downs site.

“It seems so strange they would plop down all this money, and then say this is just not working out for us,” he said. “It boggles my mind.”

If the Bears do cut a deal for a lakefront stadium, it would leave Arlington Heights with a big hole to fill, said John Melaniphy of Melaniphy & Associates, a former business and development coordinator for the village of Arlington Heights. But even without football, the former racetrack site could still attract mixed-use developments with apartments, restaurants and entertainment.

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