Quote:
Originally Posted by bnk
Am I missing where the public is on the hook for this? Do you live in Arlington Heights? I don't see where that state is paying for this or the County. http://www.chicagotribune.com/politi...nga-story.html
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/b...mka-story.html
State officials are not contemplating paying for a new stadium, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a fellow Democrat, has said. He left it up to the municipalities involved to decide what investment they may want to make. Some state lawmakers, meanwhile, have been downright hostile to the idea of providing corporate welfare for the deal. One proposed resolution would prevent the state from using taxpayer money to build new professional sports stadiums. |
Many politicians have made such promises before only to cave. My hope is that whoever is Illinois governor sticks to that promise. There has already been a bit of open-wiggle room left open by AH mayor to provide some funding. As an AH resident, I will protest loudly and often against ANY measure of funding for the Bears. It is simply not warranted, Arlington Heights (and Cook/Illinois) hold all the cards here.
The land is (or will be soon) bought and paid for. The Bears will not get a better opportunity to own their stadium in a rich market and have developer agreements providing them the ancillary revenue streams they have craved and never benefitted from before they finally sell the team and split the dividends among the various family branches. In essence, to make them more diversified, similar to the Wirtz family.
Without a real viable alternative, there is little onus for any town or city in the region to give out a small, let alone substantial subsidy, to the Bears.
If they want to go bare bones and build a 500million outdoor stadium? Fine. If they want to spend 1.25 on a dome? Sure. If they want to go all out and find the private funding for a beautiful retractable 2.5billion stadium? Awesome. Is there a demand for hotel, convention, or arena space between Allstate/Rosemont and Schaumburg/Hoffman Estates spaces? I am skeptical, but that is the Bear's bet to make.
I am as much, if not more, concerned with what they plan to do with the area around the stadium and hope they don't permanently muck it up with badly schemed plans that are called "TOD" but end up incorporating the worst of TOD/suburban planning leaving AH with decades of sparely used retail and residential that looks cheap and uninviting, especially on non-game days. If I had to place my early bets that is likely what will come about.
......One major difference going for the AH site vs. the Ravinia site is that Metra has to coordinate many of those with weekday rush hour trains. The logistics of that is more involved then the idea of running more trains on Sunday mornings and afternoons I would guess. Still, I would be slightly shocked if there is more then 3 dedicated Metra trains each way going to Bears games on Sundays in the future. So we are talking under 10k people (or well less then 20% of the stadium). That still leaves a LOT of parking to be had.
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