How Illinois fumbled the Bears in five painful years – Rolling Out

The Chicago Bears’ board of directors voted Thursday to advance plans for a new stadium in Hammond, Indiana, ending years of uncertainty with a decision that positions the 106-year-old franchise to play home games outside Illinois for the first time in its history.

The team announced the vote This morning in a joint statement from chairman George McCaskey and president and chief executive Kevin Warren. The exact site within Hammond has not yet been finalized, but the board’s decision represents the clearest signal yet that the Bears are leaving Chicago, barring an unlikely reversal by the Illinois legislature when it reconvenes in the fall.

Indiana had been pursuing the team aggressively. Earlier this year, the state legislature authorized a new stadium authority backed by taxes on admissions, hotels, restaurants, and tolls, committing roughly $1 billion in public funding toward the project. The Bears have pledged to invest more than $2 billion in construction. Under the terms of the arrangement, the team would retain all revenue generated by the stadium and retain the option to purchase it outright after 40 years, once Indiana taxpayers have paid off the bonds.

How Illinois lost the Bears

The path to Hammond runs directly through a series of Illinois failures, some institutional and some political.

The Bears’ stadium search began in June 2021 when the franchise submitted a bid to purchase the former Arlington International Racecourse, a 326-acre property in Arlington Heights. The team closed on the $197.2 million purchase in February 2023, with plans for a mixed-use development featuring a domed stadium, hotels, retail space, and housing.

Almost immediately, a property tax dispute derailed those plans. Cook County assessed the land based on the purchase price rather than the valuation the previous owner had been taxed on, creating a financial gap the Bears said made the project unworkable. The team spent years pressing for legislation that would allow them to negotiate payments in lieu of taxes, known as PILOT agreements, with local governments, arguing that property tax certainty was a prerequisite for any commitment to build.

In April 2024, Warren announced a dramatic pivot: a $4.7 billion proposal to build a publicly owned domed stadium on Chicago’s lakefront, just south of Soldier Field. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson embraced the plan publicly, but Gov. JB Pritzker and Democratic legislative leaders did not, and the proposal stalled before it gained any serious traction in Springfield.

The Bears returned their focus to Arlington Heights. The Illinois House passed a so-called megaprojects bill in late April 2026 that would have allowed the Bears to freeze property tax assessments for up to 45 years in exchange for PILOT payments. But the legislation sat in the Senate for weeks as lawmakers debated its broader implications for the state’s property tax base. It never reached a vote before the legislature adjourned last weekend.

A last-minute alternative, allowing municipalities to create their own financing authority and own a proposed stadium outright, passed the Senate at 3:39 a.m. on the session’s final night. The House adjourned approximately 45 minutes later without taking it up.

Indiana moved faster

While Illinois debated, Indiana built a framework. Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott had been pitching the Bears since late 2025, proposing a domed stadium near Wolf Lake, which straddles the Indiana-Illinois border, and describing a surrounding entertainment district he called Bearsville. When Indiana lawmakers voted unanimously in committee to advance the stadium authority legislation, the Bears called it the most meaningful step forward in their stadium planning to date.

Indiana Gov. Mike Braun signed the legislation into law within an hour of its final passage and welcomed the team’s announcement Friday. The Bears’ lease at Soldier Field, where they have played since 1971, runs through 2033, though the team has the ability to pay a penalty to exit early.

McCaskey has said the board had no control over when Churchill Downs decided to sell the Arlington Park land and moved when the opportunity arose. Critics of the process have been less charitable. One state legislator compared the sequence of events to buying a wedding dress before going on a first date.

What comes next

The board’s vote does not constitute a final decision. A team source cautioned that Arlington Heights remains technically available if Illinois finds a workable legislative path before the Bears are ready to break ground. The Hammond mayor has said he expects a definitive commitment before July 1, suggesting the window for any Illinois reversal is narrow.

A poll conducted by Suffolk University and published by the Chicago Tribune found that 56% of respondents preferred Arlington Heights, 10% preferred Indiana, and 26% had no preference. The Bears’ choice lands well outside the range of what most Chicago-area residents wanted, and the political fallout in Illinois is likely to be significant.

Warren has predicted on three separate occasions that the team would break ground within months, and has not yet been right. The Hammond plan is the furthest any Bears stadium proposal has advanced, and the first time the board itself has voted to move one forward.