Pro Football Rumors
At the beginning of June, the Bears announced their intention to move from Chicago to a new stadium to be built in Hammond, Indiana.
But that announcement was non-binding, a clear indicator that the franchise has not resolved to leave its longtime home in Illinois. Instead, the team has continued to engage with the state, per Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, making their Hammond move seem more like leverage than their No. 1 option.
Illinois has thus far been unwilling to give the Bears key financial incentives to keep them in the state, including a publicly-funded stadium, that Indiana readily offered up. But Illinois’ legislature has considered alternative ways to keep the team in Chicago, included a failed attempt to give local municipalities the power to finance, build, and lease a new stadium to the Bears.
Parts of that bill are still alive. The Bears are attempting to merge multiple pieces of legislation that were proposed earlier this year to find a path to remaining in Illinois, per Christopher Placek of the Daily Herald. Governor J.B. Pritzker has offered his assistance in the process and committed to calling a special legislative session should a particular bill be ready for a vote.
“It takes a bill,” Pritzker said (via Florio). “And that’s really what we need them to put together are the provisions of a bill. It’s one thing to articulate generally what you want. It’s another thing to actually say we’d like a provision like this, a provision like that. And those are, many of them anyway, already written.”
The governor’s optimistic stance could be further explained by his belief that the Bears’ proposed move to Indiana will not materialize despite their initial announcement.
“We think we’re actually as close as anybody to getting a stadium done here,” he added. “I don’t think Indiana is a whole heck of a lot closer than we are.”
But the situation in Hammond is not static. As part of their due diligence, the Bears are testing soil near the proposed site for a new stadium, per Patrick Finley of the Chicago Sun-Times. A team statement indicated that this is a different plot of land than the original proposal, but still within the Wolf Lake region in Hammond that they settled on over the last several months.
