Political shrugs replace scramble for funding as Bears eye move to suburbs. 'Cities are smarter now.
The road from Soldier Field to Arlington International Racecourse is 31.2 miles and years in the making, marking it as potentially the longest and biggest scoring drive in Chicago Bears’ history.
A lot has changed in the decades since Chicago last confronted the issue of a new playground for the Bears, before the team settled into a vastly remodeled and reconfigured Soldier Field in 2003 after years of negotiations involving the city and the state.
There is the booming success of the National Football League and the value of its franchises, the growing importance of year-round climate-controlled stadiums as a revenue asset for teams and far greater public opposition toward subsidizing multibillion-dollar sports facilities for wealthy owners.
But one thing has stayed the same over the years.
“It’s not so much the size of the market. It’s the stadium deal,” Ted Phillips, now the Bears’ president and CEO, said in 1996 when he was the team’s point man in negotiating for a stadium. “Stadium revenues are what NFL teams are shooting for.”
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