Conversations in Springfield about a new Chicago Bears stadium in Arlington Heights are heating up, and the village’s mayor said a decision on a stadium deal could come by the end of the month.
Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia said the Bears won’t wait around much longer.
The Illinois House was back in session this week, and the next couple weeks could be crucial to making a Bears stadium deal a reality.
Tinaglia said the Bears won’t wait until the end of the state’s legislative session in May to get a deal done; a deal that, for the Bears, must include certainty on their property taxes.
“The pressure is on to try and wrap it up with capital ASAP,” Tinaglia said
Tinaglia has been watching Springfield closely as talks between the Pritzker administration, state lawmakers, and the Bears continue regularly.
“I can promise you that no one at Halas Hall wants to wait till the end of May for this to be solved,” TInaglia said.
Lawmakers are debating a major tax incentive package aimed at keeping the bears in Illinois. The bill would allow the Bears — or any developer investing more than $500 million dollars in a project – to negotiate property taxes directly with local governments for up to 40 years.
The measure advanced out of an Illinois House committee last month, but has yet to receive a full floor vote.
Now, with the primary elections over in Illinois, Tinaglia said it’s time to act. The legislation still needs 60 votes in the Illinois House and 30 in the Illinois Senate to pass.
Tinaglia said he’s confident a deal can get done.
Lawmakers from Chicago initially pushed back on any deal to help the Bears build a stadium in Arlington Heights, hoping to keep the team in Chicago.
But after talks stalled, the Bears expanded their stadium search to Indiana, a move that raised the stakes as Indiana lawmakers quickly approved their own legislation to lure the Bears across the state line.
Meantime, the Kansas City Chiefs struck a deal to move across state lines from Missouri to Kansas, a warning sign that NFL teams are willing to leave if the right deal isn’t on the table.
“That really opened up everybody’s eyes that, ‘Hey, maybe they would really leave. Somebody else is doing it, right?’” Tinaglia said.
That also helped push Illinois leaders to move faster and have a more united front to keep the Bears from leaving the state.
“It wasn’t about Arlington Heights versus Chicago any longer. This is now about keeping one of the most fabulous franchises in the whole NFL here in Illinois,” Tinaglia said.
The mayor said Gov. JB Pritzker and Illinois state Rep. Kam Buckner (D-Chicago) have been the key negotiators to make a deal to keep the Bears in Illinois happen-
The Illinois legislative session ends May 31, but Tinaglia said a stadium deal needs to move forward in the next two weeks to bring the Bears to Arlington Heights and avoid losing them to Indiana.
“If we can get that done sometime before the end of the month, the hope is that we actually have a vote and kind of rest the concerns of the team,” he said.
