Bears ownership wants to relocate from Chicago to Arlington Heights.
Illinois taxpayers, if you have an extra $855 million around, please send it to the National Football League’s Chicago Bears franchise owners. You see, the Bears franchise ownership group needs that type of public help for infrastructure to get its Arlington Heights’ stadium-village project complete according to the business’s real estate consultant HR&A Advisors Inc. Meanwhile Arlington Heights elected officials claim that the Bears’ stadium-village project would generate at least $15 million a year in new revenues for the town of around 75,000 people. Hunden Strategic Partners, which was brought into the stadium game by Arlington Heights, painted a rosy picture of the project by issuing a three-page summary which called the proposed redevelopment “a powerful economic engine.” It would generate $3.5 million a year in local sales taxes, $1.5 million in food and beverage taxes, $9 million in amusement taxes and $1.1 million in hotel and motel taxes, for a total of $15 million, according to the report.
The CEO of the franchise Kevin Warren has told his customers it’s Arlington Heights time. The business has to leave Chicago and set up shop in a small Chicago suburb. But the Governor of Illinois JB Pritzker has said, fine you can leave Chicago but there is still a massive stadium debt on the venue you use in Chicago and we would like Bears’ ownership to pay down that debt. “We need the Bears to pay off what’s owed on the existing stadium. That’s going to be a really important feature of whatever happens. if they want a bill or some other help, we’re going to make that a prerequisite.” That bill is $534 million. There doesn’t seem to be a financial plan to build a stadium-village on a 326-acre parcel of land in Arlington Heights without public money involved. The stadium game continues.
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