Chicago Bears Reverse Course, Will Not Build Stadium On Arlington Property

According to several news reports, the Chicago Bears are now planning to build a new stadium within the city limits of Chicago. The Bears purchased Arlington Park and the surrounding property from Churchill Downs Incorporated in 2021 for $197.2 million and announced plans to build a stadium there. Since the purchase, the Arlington grandstand has been torn down, but the Bears did not start the process of developing the property.

Citing a source, ESPN.com is reporting that the Bears are ready to invest $2 billion in private money into a publicly owned domed stadium and park space that would feature year-round community amenities.

“The Chicago Bears are proud to contribute over $2 billion to build a stadium and improve open spaces for all families, fans and the general public to enjoy in the City of Chicago,” Bears team president and CEO Kevin Warren said in a statement. “The future stadium of the Chicago Bears will bring a transformative opportunity to our region — boosting the economy, creating jobs, facilitating mega events and generating millions in tax revenue. We look forward to sharing more information when our plans are finalized.”

According to ESPN.com, the Bears began exploring options for a new stadium beyond Arlington Heights last summer when they announced that those plans were “at risk” as negotiations over property taxes reached a $100 million impasse.

Should the plans to build a stadium in Chicago come to fruition, it is expected that the Bears will put the Arlington property up for sale.

Dave McCaffrey, the executive director of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, was skeptical that the Bears will actually follow through on the plans to build a stadium within the city limits. He believes the announcement may be nothing more than posturing to get a better deal.

“Even though they made that announcement I don't think Arlington is dead when it comes to building a stadium there,” McCaffrey said. “There are all sorts of political games being played. I don't think the situation is as definitive as they made it sound in that announcement. They are trying to get tax breaks and public funding for a stadium, and the announcement made today is often the sort of thing people do when they are trying to get money.”

McCaffrey said he doesn't foresee any scenario where a new buyer would emerge and construct a racetrack on the site. He noted that the current laws in Illinois do not allow for a racino to be built at Arlington.

“The Bears completely destructed Arlington and all its accouterments, the water tower, the barns, the dorm rooms, the vets offices, every single piece of anything that was built is gone. It's just a piece of vacant land. The amount of money it would take to rebuild a racetrack, barns, dorm rooms and all else that goes into a racing site would be a gigantic investment.”

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Stadium Plan for Arlington Could Be In Trouble

The Chicago Bears' plans to build a stadium in Arlington Heights, Illinois on the site of the former Arlington Park has reached a “stalemate,” Bears president Kevin Warren told local residents at a public forum, according to a report from Front Office Sports.

Warren told the crowd that an ongoing tax dispute has halted stadium development efforts there, even while demolition continues on the former racetrack, the outlet reported.

At issue is a tax assessment on the racetrack land that would raise the annual property tax from $2.8 million to $16.2 million. Other towns continue to try to lure the Bears to their towns and cities, including Chicago, Naperville and Waukegan, according to Front Office Sports.

“We've had a stalemate and a lack of communication, and it's a little more convoluted at this point in time than I thought it would be,” Front Office Sports quotes Warren as saying. “If we're not communicating, which we haven't been, there's not going to be much progress made.”

Plans have called for a sports entertainment complex, including a domed stadium and other attractions.

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Late Bid to Keep Bears in Chicago Despite Looming Arlington Sale

The developer advising Chicago's mayor is proposing a $2.2-billion renovation proposal that includes a glass stadium dome to keep the city's National Football League team, the Bears, at its longtime downtown location, Soldier Field.

The website Front Office Sports published details Jan. 8. The news is of peripheral interest to horse racing enthusiasts, because the Bears have otherwise entered into a purchase agreement to instead build a $5-billion stadium on the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse.

Although the specifics of the proposal are new, city officials have been on record for well over a year saying that they would like to work out a plan to keep the Bears within Chicago and not see the team move to the suburb of Arlington Heights.

The topic has percolated in recent months because the Bears disclosed in September that public funding would be necessary to build the new stadium. Team officials had not previously acknowledged that taxpayers might be on the hook for the $5-billion stadium build, which is separate from the land transaction.

The $197-million sale of the 326-acre Arlington property has been in a due-diligence process since September 2021, which is when Arlington last hosted Thoroughbred racing. The deadline for closing on the deal is March 2023, although the gaming corporation that is selling Arlington, Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI), could always extend the deadline by negotiating further with the Bears.

In an open letter published on the football team's website, the Bears stated, “We remain under contract to purchase the property, but there are conditions that must be met in order to be in a position to close. If we do close on the property, it does not guarantee we will develop it. While under contract with the seller of Arlington Park, we will not be discussing or exploring any other alternative stadium sites or opportunities, including renovations of Soldier Field.”

During the summer and fall of 2022, CDI auctioned off the contents of Arlington, selling everything from office and kitchen items to the racetrack's marker poles, finish lines, starting gates, signage and artwork.

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Bears-Arlington Partnership ‘Makes Too Much Sense to Blithely Dismiss’

As the only member out of 10 on the Illinois Racing Board (IRB) to directly address the pending closure of Arlington International Racecourse and the devastating effect it will have on the state's racing circuit, commissioner Alan Henry said at Thursday's monthly meeting that a losing bidder in the track's sale is still working behind the scenes to fashion a deal to keep racing alive alongside a new football stadium on the 326-acre parcel.

Back on Sept. 29, Churchill Downs, Inc. (CDI), the gaming corporation that owns Arlington, announced the signing of a $197.2 million purchase and sales agreement that would transfer the crown jewel of Illinois racing to the Chicago Bears for the planned construction of a new stadium and mixed-use development.

With Arlington out of the equation for 2022, Thoroughbred dates in greater Chicago will wither to just 76 programs over two seasonal meets at Hawthorne Race Course, which will also host 75 dates of Standardbred racing next year.

One day after the Arlington sale became public, the state's Senate Executive Gaming Committee met to discuss the future of horse racing in Illinois. Henry said at the Oct. 14 IRB meeting that he came away “with a bad feeling” after listening to that hearing.

“I get that it looks bleak,” Henry continued. “But 30-year Marine Corps veteran Roy Arnold, the front man for the underbidders, made it clear to the subcommittee that he is not retreating.”

Arnold formerly worked for CDI as Arlington's president, starting in 2006 and resigning in 2010. When the track was put up for sale earlier this year, he partnered with a group of developers and investors to try to buy the property. That group's bid was the only known offer to preserve racing at Arlington.

When the Bears won the bidding process, Arnold said at the next-day Senate hearing that he would be willing to either work with the new owners to keep the track operational on 125 acres of the site or to step in and pursue the purchase if the football team backed out.

Henry said that a purchase and sales agreement is “not evidence of a done deal. There are still many variables out there. Just one of them is that at any moment, Chicago's mayor could throw some serious cards on the table [regarding a counter-proposal to keep the Bears in their current downtown home] now that the Bears have called her bluff.”

Henry continued: “Sure, Arlington Park's permanent closing may be likely, But it is not inevitable. Why? Because a Bears-Arlington Park partnership makes too much sense to blithely dismiss. And because if the Bears withdraw, [Arnold's group] is standing at the ready.”

Henry said that as “everyone in the industry knows, the 2022 racing calendar is a stopgap that is likely unsustainable beyond next year. Half a season for either breed is simply not enough.”

One idea that has been floated is for a harness track to be built on the site of a former state-owned mental health facility in the village of Tinley Park, about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. That would allow Hawthorne to transition over to full-time Thoroughbred racing, and each breed would have its own year-round racetrack.

“The consensus among horsemen is the construction of a harness track in Tinley Park is an integral piece of the solution, and should be treated as a priority. But right now that is just not happening,” Henry said.

“As I hear it, some Thoroughbred trainers are now considering moving to Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas at the end of the current Hawthorne meet and not coming back in late winter,” Henry said. “Some are also looking at Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, and other states for 2022 given the need to lock in stalls next summer.”

Henry continued: “Then there's the reality that advance-deposit wagering platforms are grabbing rapidly increasing percentages of the betting handle. That means money is increasingly being diverted away from the [horsemen's] already paltry purses. The laws governing that split have to be rewritten to better ensure a healthy industry.”

Henry also noted that although racinos have been legal in the state since June 2019, none are yet operational at either Hawthorne or FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing (the rebranded Fairmount Park), so purses aren't being supplemented by gaming revenues.

Henry suggested that moving forward, there should be a standing item on every IRB agenda for Hawthorne and FanDuel to update their progress on building racinos, and also “to address the harness track situation.”

But beyond one commissioner thanking Henry for his “particularly interesting” comments, no other IRB members voiced support for Henry's suggestion about the standing agenda item. And none of them chimed in about the state of the racing circuit when given the chance to speak during the “commissioner comments” section of the agenda.

This “elephant in the room” pattern of largely ignoring the most dire and pressing racing issue in the state has persisted at IRB meetings for the better part of 2021. With the exception of Henry, who has been outspoken about Arlington's pending closure for six consecutive IRB meetings since CDI declared the property would be sold for non-horse-racing purposes, the other nine IRB commissioners have, for the most part, maintained a stunning silence about the collapse of Chicago racing.

So what other matters did the IRB take up on Thursday? The proceedings were almost entirely officious.

By 10-0 votes, the IRB approved the licensing of an outrider and an entry clerk for Hawthorne's upcoming harness meet, disbursed Quarter Horse purse funds to FanDuel for the four races that track carded this past season, and signed off on granting a pari-mutuel tax credit to tracks and off-track betting licensees.

The IRB also had to bring back and ratify its 2022 dates order from last month because the way it had been voted in didn't comply with the state's open meetings act. This required commissioners to electronically sign the related documentation, and the meeting stalled briefly when several commissioners couldn't figure out how to do it.

The IRB also spent time during Thursday's public meeting congratulating a staffer for running a marathon, and discussed the upcoming move to new office space, which was described as a more modernized “new playground.”

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