Chicago Bears explore move to suburbs before White Sox might

Photo by John Picken

The Chicago Bears created shock waves on Thursday by announcing that it submitted a bid to purchase the Arlington International Racecourse property in Arlington Heights. There are a billion steps in between this week and being able to call them the Arlington Heights Bears, but it’s probably the most valid flirtation with a Chicago professional sports team moving to the suburbs since, what, Jerry Reinsdorf’s group purchasing land in Addison in the mid-1980s?

You don’t have to care about football to pay attention to this story, just because the Bears’ current predicament shares some characteristics with the White Sox’s situation. Neither team owns the stadium or land. While both teams’ stadiums can be described as “fine,” they’re missing out on the trend of developing entire entertainment districts around a property. Also, the Bears’ lease for Soldier Field runs through 2033, while the White Sox’s ends in 2029, with a team option to extend it through 2030.

It’s not a perfect parallel, because a new Bears stadium would ostensibly be aimed at luring other major neutral-site sporting events — Super Bowls, collegiate championships, etc. — whereas ballparks have shifted away from accommodating anything besides baseball games. Still, we’ll probably learn a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of moving from the most Chicago of locations to a standard suburb, as well as whether any municipality around Chicago is willing to devote public funds to a stadium project. The Sox Park deal brokered by the White Sox in the late 1980s still leaves a sour taste for good reason.

Chicago has never had a major professional sports team play in the suburbs, and the Bears making headway in that direction might erase any stigma of another team doing the same. The White Sox would seem to be next to create stadium drama, as their renegotiated deal incorporates planned obsolescence by the end of this decade.

There are a lot of reasons why a suburban ballpark makes sense, but there’s also a persistent history of people, organizations and, yes, teams, rediscovering the advantages of being situated in the urban core. That’s why it’s always fun to daydream about ideal ballpark locales within the city limits, even if most aren’t feasible for one reason or another.

Case in point:

Is it a bad idea? Almost certainly. Do I care? Not really. Sometimes it’s just fun to play SimCity for a few hours.

This is all why I urge White Sox fans to appreciate Guaranteed Rate Field for what it is, because for all the improvements the next ballpark could offer, there could be plenty of headaches during and after. At least everybody inside and outside can let the Bears run headfirst into some of them beforehand. Maybe the grass looks greener right now, but just remember that Roger Bossard will probably be involved regardless.

(Photo by John Picken)

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dwjm3

I’d love to see the Sox play on the lakefront.

It would essentially be Oracle Park with a Skyline view mixed in. I do think a solid environmental study would need to be done to make sure wind patterns off the lake wouldn’t affect the baseball in a way that makes the park a nightmare to play in.

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ThisReallySox

I think any new park should have a retractable roof.

knoxfire30

This makes way way way too much sense for both franchises and the city in general so I give it a 1% chance of happening.

As Cirensica

As a person who has never been in Chicago, listening too much Wilco, and my readings in this forum make my perception from the city of Chicago and Chicagoans as a modern place with sad people that love to do things backwards yet get things done correctly somehow. Enjoy life, and good few drinks, believe outsiders underestimate them, and moan a lot but meant half of it.

metasox

the lakefront is a great location if the goal is to make a ballpark really difficult to get to

peterskills

The Chicago Fire would probably take issue with your definition of ‘Chicago professional sports team.’ Their decision to take the stadium bait and move to suburban Bridgeview was obviously a disaster. Of course the Bears are not the Fire so the comparison only goes so far, but I wouldn’t completely dismiss it.

knoxfire30

the definition clearly lists a 5th tier soccer league as not a professional sport that matters

itaita

I have no idea if that stadium would’ve worked out since i dont remember the last time the fire were even close to good. As an aside i was going to say would work cause i thought they were still playing there. Why did they change the logo? I thought it was neat.

Michael Kenny

The problem with Toyota/SeatGeek is that they built it right before MLS blew up. 10 years after it opened, the Sounders were packing in 40,000 a game and the Fire had a stadium with 20,000 seats that’s hard to get to.

DanofDuPage

The Fire fit perfectly in Naperville (North Central College)before they built in Bridgeview. They had big fan turn out and plenty to do in Downtown Naperville before and after the games. It was fun!

metasox

Given the number of games played, baseball lends itself to a somewhat “organic” neighborhood-like entertainment area – like Wrigley. Would be unfortunate for the city proper to lose a potential positive urban design plan with a new stadium at its core. With a relative handful of games plus a few marquee events, a suburban location seems more of a fit for football.

Last edited 2 years ago by metasox
burning-phoneix

God, the additions to Soldier field are hideous. How did Chicago let this happen?

dwjm3

It doesn’t look great outside but the sightlines inside are great. One is right on top of the action for football. It was always to be hard to squeeze a modern stadium in a 1920s footprint.

knoxfire30

yea they just couldn’t leave some pillars behind

the inside is actually great for viewing/attending but the low capacity is really dumb when you have a 10 to 15 year season ticket wait list and a city that can obviously sustain 80k a game no problem

dwjm3

The NFL business model is such that you have to share your regular seating revenue with the other teams but you don’t have to share your suite revenue. I think they were factoring this in when deciding the seating capacity.

Last edited 2 years ago by dwjm3
metasox

Didn’t Daley just make it happen? It was also ill-planned – too few seats to attract events like the World Cup. And, somehow surprising to planners, caused the site to lose its national landmark designation.

dwjm3

No they reduced the capacity so the upper deck didn’t tower even further over the the Columns and I think what I said above was factored in.

metasox

That is kind of the point. It never made sense. And even when people began to understand that, it still got shoved through

joe-u4351

As far as the “Entertainment District” concept is concerned, the White Sox (Jerry Reinsdorf) never wanted that. The “walled garden” concept is what Jerry wanted from day one. With the “walled garden”, he can create and have control of all amenities and reap the profit from all with no competition from businesses from the outside walls of the ballpark. The Illinois Sports Stadium Authority has given The White Sox pretty much everything they wanted.

The Bear are a different story as Soldier Field is owned by the Chicago Park District which has control over when liquor can be sold as well as other amenities that can or cannot operate in Soldier Field. Even though the Illinois Sport Stadium Authority provides funding for Soldier Field, the Chicago Park District rules the roost in many respects which is something The White Sox do not have to deal with.

Politically, there is little appetite for stadium bidding wars in 2021 and beyond. With all of the other social issues of the day such as crime, education inequality, lack of health care and city/state infrastructure, a billionaire putting out his or her hand for a stadium deal after a pandemic is just poor optics.

Jerry Reinsdorf like all of will die at some point. As long as he or his family own the White Sox, they have little to complain about wit Guaranteed Rate Field as what you see is exactly what they asked for except maybe for location. The Oakland A’s are finding out the stadium deals in the current time frame are just poor politics.

asinwreck

Yep, Jerry sold the park, getting the terms he wanted from the public sector without the burden of maintenance costs. Meanwhile the Tribune Co. held onto Wrigley after buying the Cubs. Those decisions, along with the divergent broadcasting histories of the two franchises in the early 1980s, have a lot to do with the relative economic growth of the Cubs in the market.

asinwreck

I’d add the Oakland A’s know that stadium deals in that city have terrible optics going back far before 2020. The saga of the Raiders going and coming and going is just part of the past half century of struggles over stadia in Alameda County.

Charles Euchner’s 30-year-old book is still an essential read on Oakland’s stadium, and also has good coverage on Reinsdorf’s New Comiskey politicking.

To Err is Herrmann

In an alternate world, Jerry Reinsdorf moves the White Sox to that sardine can in Tampa Bay after 1990 and then Chicago is awarded a new AL franchise in 1998 (White Sox or Whales or Orphans) owned by the guys who run the Tampa Bay Rays now.

Michael Kenny

I really, REALLY hope the Sox never move to the suburbs.

And quite frankly, I don’t understand how they still haven’t turned at least one parking lot into shops and restaurants. They already have the space to build the kind of playground that teams now seem to covet, but they’ve shown no interest in actually doing it. To me it’s a sign they don’t plan on staying at 35th and Shields.

Last edited 2 years ago by Michael Kenny
lifelongjd

Never happen. Sox have too good of a sweetheart deal to ever leave their current stadium. That’s what is most frustrating with Jerry always saying he will spend money if the attendance supports it. He only pays taxes when the attendance totals go over 1.9 million. Even then it’s only $3 per ticket or something crazy like that.

Trooper Galactus

Except it’s questionable whether Jerry could get another deal like that without Daley, who pretty much sold out Chicago year after year but somehow never paid for it at the polls. The parking meter thing was pretty much the capstone of his career in that regard.

dwjm3

It was Thompson that sold out to Reinsdorf not Daley