"The most expensive stadium in the world, the new $5.5 billion SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California — the venue where the Super Bowl was played just a few days ago — was built by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke using private funding. Lightfoot — and the residents of Arlington Heights, too, for that matter — should keep that in mind when negotiating with the Bears."
To paraphrase a commenter in another thread, “building a roof is merely putting more lip stick on the pig that is Soldier Field.” LLs problem is one of butts. That is, butts that can’t get a seat in one of the 65,100 seats now existing in a stadium that once held over 100,000 seats. The McCashkeys are drooling over the lost revenue they could achieve with a facility that has a significantly larger seating capacity. A new roof just won’t cut it. SoFi stadium is configured for 70,240 seats, but it is designed to be reconfigured to upwards of 100,000… Read more »
Last edited 4 years ago by Henry Hatch
The Paraclete
4 years ago
The bears should exit the city and never look back.
Old Spartan
4 years ago
She’s got more leverage than she thinks. Bears in Arlington Heights won’t happen. The high construction cost in Illinois with union labor is one major issue. But the infrastructure there is not in place to handle 70 thousand or more attendees at one time. The race track never hit that level of one day attendance. Who will pay for that? And another deal killer is property tax, which as everyone already knows and the Bears haven’t figured out yet, is an insurmountable burden at current levels.
That’s one way of looking at it, but it does look like a done deal. There’s a growing trend of teams moving to the suburbs for stadiums. Bears would be bucking this trend by staying is Chicago.
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
To paraphrase a commenter in another thread, “building a roof is merely putting more lip stick on the pig that is Soldier Field.” LLs problem is one of butts. That is, butts that can’t get a seat in one of the 65,100 seats now existing in a stadium that once held over 100,000 seats. The McCashkeys are drooling over the lost revenue they could achieve with a facility that has a significantly larger seating capacity. A new roof just won’t cut it. SoFi stadium is configured for 70,240 seats, but it is designed to be reconfigured to upwards of 100,000… Read more »
The bears should exit the city and never look back.
She’s got more leverage than she thinks. Bears in Arlington Heights won’t happen. The high construction cost in Illinois with union labor is one major issue. But the infrastructure there is not in place to handle 70 thousand or more attendees at one time. The race track never hit that level of one day attendance. Who will pay for that? And another deal killer is property tax, which as everyone already knows and the Bears haven’t figured out yet, is an insurmountable burden at current levels.
That’s one way of looking at it, but it does look like a done deal. There’s a growing trend of teams moving to the suburbs for stadiums. Bears would be bucking this trend by staying is Chicago.
Property Taxes can be avoided under the pritzker plan. Build a stadium without toilets.