Bears’ ownership is not getting taxpayers’ help to build a Chicago stadium-village this year.

The National Football League season has not started yet but the Chicago Bears ownership can consider 2024 a lost season in the all-important stadium game. The McCaskey family-Bears ownership could not win the support of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. The governor said it would be “near impossible” to approve Bears’ stadium deal this fall. Bears’ ownership and its lobbyists will still be around the state capital in Springfield as there is always as the old saying goes, wait until next year.

The McCaskey family purchased a 326-acre piece of property in Arlington Heights that could house a stadium-village in February 2023. Arlington Heights, a Chicago suburb, is about 26 miles north of Chicago.  At one point,  the McCaskeys were dedicated to the Arlington Heights site and planned to move the team to the Chicago suburb but then the McCaskeys received the tax bill on the property and they didn’t like what they saw. The property tax was higher than anticipated and that caused the McCaskeys to do a double take. In May, the McCaskeys decided that Chicago was their kind of town and proposed a $4.7 billion lakefront stadium-village in Soldier Field’s south parking lot that an awful lot of taxpayers’ money, $900 million in public financing in upfront costs and another $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds for infrastructure improvements around the stadium. “There isn’t much change. I mean, I made it clear to the Bears’ leadership that it would be near impossible to get anything done if there was a proposal put on the table by them that could get done. But in reality, there isn’t a proposal on the table right now that would be acceptable to anyone I know in the legislature,” Pritzker said.  The McCaskey family is contractually obligated to use Soldier Field for Bears’ games until 2033 in Chicago.