The Bears own 326 acres of land on the site of the old Arlington International Racecourse. However, they are still seeking tax certainty from the Illinois General Assembly, which is scheduled to be in session through May 31. That certainty would come via legislation that would freeze property taxes and allow developers to negotiate a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) with local governments.
“I believe they continue to work on the PILOT legislation,” Warren said. “I believe they are scheduled to come back at some time in the middle of April. PILOT is not specifically for the Chicago Bears. I think the perception and the focus from a legislation standpoint is that it is good for business in Illinois to be able to allow businesses to at least have a manageable amount of taxes that they will be required to pay. This is something the Illinois legislature has been working on for many years.”
The Bears already have secured tax certainty to build a stadium on a 340-acre site in Hammond after the state of Indiana passed legislation in February.
“We have been in great discussions with the state of Indiana in regard to the site in Hammond and we did have legislation pass recently,” Warren said. “We feel like we are making progress. We have a list of items that we are working on from a due diligence standpoint. Indiana has been excellent to work with during our stadium project.
“One good thing about it, both of the sites are excellent sites and we are focused on making sure that we build a world-class stadium that can create a wonderful fan experience because our fans are so important to us. They deserve a world-class stadium. They deserve a world class fan experience that has proper tailgating, ingress, egress, all the amenities that the newer advanced stadiums have.”
McCaskey lauded Warren for keeping him up to date on all of the latest stadium developments.
“The fact of the matter is we don’t have a deal to consider right now,” McCaskey said. “In Indiana, we have a great site. There’s some due diligence that needs to be completed before we can fully evaluate the site, and we have a legislative framework in place. In Arlington Heights, we have a site that’s shovel-ready, but we don’t yet have a legislative framework. There are prudent and wise and responsible public servants in Indiana working on it, and there are prudent and wise and responsible public servants in Illinois working on it.
“If I could offer one football analogy, just as the course of a game, things ebb and flow. They go back and forth. Sometimes there is great momentum on one side; sometimes the momentum shifts suddenly to another side. I’ve said to our family, ‘We need to be patient and let the deal come to us.’ We think a deal will materialize somewhere. We’re comfortable with either site. We have people at the Bears working with public servants in both Indiana and Illinois trying to get this done.”
Asked about the Bears’ stadium situation during a press conference at the owners meetings, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that he felt “it’s really important that they come to a resolution on this relatively soon … This is an important time to get this resolved.”
“The biggest thing is we need to make sure we are in position to build a world-class stadium for our fans,” Warren said. “We are focused on it. You heard the commissioner say yesterday that the time is now for us to be able to do it.
“I think the biggest thing is, in all these big projects, you have to have tax certainty, which is critically important. We would not be able to build a stadium without tax certainty. Fortunately, we do have tax certainty in the state of Indiana. There are no property taxes for our stadium in the state of Indiana, so that is certain. That legislation has passed. But here in Illinois, for us to even consider an opportunity, we have to have tax certainty and infrastructure. Without that we cannot proceed forward.”
