Bears to unveil plans for ‘state-of-the-art’ lakefront stadium ahead of NFL draft

The Bears will finally open the playbook Wednesday on building and bankrolling the domed stadium on the lakefront site that has rather suddenly become their primary focus.

Just a day before they're all-but-certain to use the first pick in the NFL draft to draft quarterback-of-the-future Caleb Williams, the Bears will hold a news conference at Soldier Field to unveil plans for “a state-of-the-art, publicly-owned stadium, along with additional green and open space with access to the lakefront" on the Museum Campus.

Chicagoan Marc Ganis, who has advised numerous NFL teams on stadium financing, called the timing of Bears President Kevin Warren’s stadium reveal “brilliant.”

“The national and international focus of the sports world on Thursday night is going to be on the NFL draft and, in particular, the No. 1 draft pick — and the Bears own the No. 1 pick. By announcing the stadium plan the day before, it will get a tremendous amount of attention locally and also nationally and internationally,” Ganis said.

“Tens of millions of people around the country are going to see the renderings and the plans for the new stadium. The attention that it will receive will be dramatic — all because they have the No. 1 pick. It wouldn’t be the same if they had the No. 2 pick," Ganis added.

"If everything goes as hoped," he added, April 24 and April 25 will become "seminal dates" in Bears history — "taking the quarterback that they hope will be their franchise star leading them to Super Bowls for many years to come and the stadium that will be the first that the team will ever have built and designed themselves.”

The Bears have already committed to investing more than $2 billion in private money to build a stadium south of Soldier Field whose total cost, sources said, could easily approach $3.5 billion. But among the questions to be answered Wednesday is how the team plans to fill that $1.5 billion construction funding gap. They also need to explain how they would deconstruct much of Soldier Field while preserving the historic colonnades and other original aspects of the stadium, which was dedicated as a war memorial. And, they must outline where the money will. come from for $1 billion worth of infrastructure improvements needed to make the lakefront more accessible.

Mayor Brandon Johnson already has cracked the door open to a potential public subsidy to help the Bears, just as he has for the White Sox plans for a new ballpark at the vacant South Loop parcel known as “the 78.”

Johnson’s decision to attend Wednesday’s Soldier Field unveiling could be a sign he's prepared to put the city’s money where his mouth is, even if progressive voters who helped put him on office ultimately question his spending priorities.

“So far, it hasn’t cost him anything. This has been an easy support of a local business that is very popular. ... He’s been saying the right things. Good relationship. Want to keep the Bears in [Chicago], but there has to be public benefit,” Ganis said.

“The relationship with the Bears — it was toxic while [Lori] Lightfoot was mayor. And it has significantly improved” under Johnson.

Bears diagram their play

Last month, the Bears held their first meeting with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, the state agency they want to help finance their lakefront dome.

Frank Bilecki, that agency's executive director, said Warren was eyeing the same portion of city’s hotel tax the White Sox hope to use to build a new, $1.5 billion stadium in the South Loop.

Plans outlined at that time by the Bears included "a potential hotel, but not a specific location for the hotel,” Bilecki said. "There were playing fields for other sports and activities in the area where Soldier Field is now. ... Restaurants and bars were also mentioned, depending on financing. There was a Hall of Fame area as well,” Bilecki told the Sun-Times after that meeting.

The bigger the hotel and entertainment district surrounding a lakefront stadium, the more tax revenue it will generate to help finance the project. But there’s a catch. The more the team proposes to build on the lakefront, the bigger the legal target for Friends of the Parks, the advocacy group that has long served as the lakefront’s primary protector.

Friends of the Parks, which Ganis called “very formidable and very committed," is a force to be reckoned with. Just ask movie mogul George Lucas, who once hoped to build his interactive museum on the same Soldier Field parking lot the Bears now covet.

“While I have lived here — and it’s been decades — it’s hard to think of anything that’s been built east of Lake Shore Drive that impacted the Lakefront Protection Ordinance other than the renovation of Soldier Field and the parking lot next to it,” Ganis said.

“When Friends of the Parks was able to block a fully-funded museum from being built east of Lake Shore Drive, it said a lot about their influence and their commitment.”

Bye, bye, Arlington Heights?

The Bears apparently have abandoned plans to build a domed stadium on the 326-acre site of the old Arlington International Racecourse — after spending $197.2 million to acquire it. The team had expressed disappointment at failing to secure a large enough property tax break on that land. Local school districts opposed a lower assessment, saying it would shortchange students.

"None of this would be an issue if the taxing bodies in Arlington Heights didn’t get greedy," Ganis said.

With the spring legislative session entering a critical juncture, the Bears and Sox have intensified negotiations to hammer out a joint financing package to divide the bonding capacity and plug funding gaps.

No increase is contemplated in the hotel room tax. Chicago's already is among the nation's highest, Bilecki has said.

But both teams, he added, also understand that revenue from that tax can't fund two new stadiums and also pay off old stadium debts — “which, I assume, is part of the ongoing discussion between the teams. That’s up to them to try and figure out. ... It’s the million-dollar question. ”

That outstanding debt includes the bonds used to pay for the 2003 Soldier Field renovation. Those bonds also have balloon payments at the end; payments go from $56.7 million this year to a final payment of $90.5 million in 2032.

Another $50 million in outstanding bonds issued by Bilecki's agency were used to fund renovations to Guaranteed Rate Field, where the White Sox play now. Those bonds won’t be retired until 2029, when the baseball team’s lease expires.

Whenever hotel tax revenue fails to grow at 5.5% a year, Chicago taxpayers must make up the difference. That’s happened three times, and twice in the last three years. The biggest deficit was $27.3 million in 2022.

The Sox financing plan for the South Loop parcel calls for all $589.1 million — including $375 million in principal and $214 million in interest — to be paid off by a 35-to-40-year extension of IFSA bonds, also backed by the hotel tax.

The Sox also hope to create a “sales tax overlay district” that would require the city, state and count to forfeit a portion of sales tax revenue generated within the boundaries of the 78. That revenue would primarily serve as a backup to guarantee that bond holders are “taken care of when there are outlier events like COVID or 9/11” that cause hotel tax revenues to plummet,” Bailey told the Sun-Times last month.

It was not known immediately known whether the Bears plan to use the sales and amusement tax growth generated by their proposed lakefront development to help bankroll the stadium project.

But the team is expected to generate its $2 billion contribution to the project by selling naming rights to the new stadium, selling a far more expensive version of the personal seat licenses that bankrolled the renovation of the existing Soldier Field and by openin a stadium sportsbook and tapping a forgiveable loan from the National Football League for hundreds of millions of dollars.