I would guess so, yeah. They needed to get the funding done today to open for 2028 best-case scenario, right? I'd say they stay put through at least 2029 at this point.

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Man I never thought my village would be mentioned in the same sentence as Naperville. At least we're not in DuPage county!

theyre likely hoping williams takes the bears deep into the playoffs, or win a title before the new stadium. their bargaining power will greatly be in their favor then.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Warrens plan is to wait and hope that Illinois gives him 2 billion dollars in the fall? Seriously? This organization is an embarrassment.

Wasn't Warren's whole thing "you have to give me money RIGHT NOW, there is no other time to give me money, you will suffer the consequences if you don't immediately give me money"? Kinda hard to do an encore performance of that, isn't it?

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I'm afraid I must insist. You see, our owner, she has been most vocal on the subject of the football monies. "Where is the money?" "When are you going to get the money?" "Why aren't you getting the money now?" And so on. So please, the money.

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Yeah. This was a big blunder by Warren. The fact that he convinced them that AH sucks because it's not by water a year into the planning for AH only works if you actually get the right offer from the city and state. It sounds like he only got the city to do it.

It will still get done one way or another but this was a big delay.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

why would 65k people all be coming by road?

I'll admit, I'm biased....I'd attend my first Bears game if they moved out there. I've had Bulls season tickets and Cubs season tickets but never been to a game at Soldier and never will.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

Because a station halfway up the Northwest Line only benefits a small group of people and most Bears fans are obsessed with giant parking lots?

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It wasn't even as if they had some big knock-down-drag-out battle on the statehouse floor that the Bears ultimately lost. The government just completely sure-Janned Warren's entire pitch. The Sox, too.

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if the Bears were in AH or Naperville, their season ticket base would change. Lots of money in the northwestern, western burbs. They must know this.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

I wonder if most Cowboys fans attending games are from Dallas proper or Irving/Arlington.

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The northwest suburbs aren't that wealthy. The Barringtons, yes, Park Ridge, maybe, but most of the area is firmly middle-class, and Bears tickets are already very expensive before a new stadium.


Less relevant. Dallas-Ft. Worth is a pavement paradise on a level that parking-obsessed Bears fans could only dream of. Those shitkickers drive 20 minutes in their F-150s for a gallon of milk. The stadium location doesn't matter.

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Warren had zero leverage from the start, they'd already bought Arlington Park. I still don't understand Warren's plan to play the city against AH and vice versa. He's telling AH he needs property tax certainty, which essentially is a difference of $5-7 million per year to what is on the table now, and then also telling Chicago the Bears have a $2.5 billion check to write. What is AH supposed to say to that? They clearly can't come close to what the Bears want from the city and state and even if the school board caves completely, AH still can't close the supposed funding gap with any offer. So there was never really a threat to compel AH to do anything and the ask from the Bears of the city and the state is just absurd. To refinance the original Soldier Field renovation bonds for 40 years at today's interest rates, lol. From the original pivot to the lakefront site Warren's entire pitch is just totally incoherent with reality.

100% correct on the Cowboys.
Dallas as the city has not ever been the focal point. They've always been a sprawled out ginormous "Metroplex" as opposed to a big city (financial center) with surrounding suburbs like Chicago.

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Yeah, most of the South was designed for the car. Chicago was not and many of its suburbs, including Arlington Heights and its 24-foot-wide east-west arterial, are not.

What's interesting to me is that public transit is a necessity for Cubs games and generally advisable for Sox/Bulls/Hawks/college games (though I am forever befuddled that they built a Green Line station at Damen instead of a Pink Line station at Madison). But when it comes to the Bears, there's this idea that going to the game should be a perfectly frictionless doorstep-to-doorstep drive, that the Kennedy and Eisenhower should just part like the Red Sea so that people can engage in the sacred ritual of eating pasta salad near the back of an SUV. This constant braying for more parking, more parking, more parking: yeah, you'd be parking right on Wilke trying to get home for three hours because the area's not designed to have that many cars descend upon it and you can't make it so it is.

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The parking issue can't be adequately fixed at either site, but that's not my issue with the current Soldier Field/proposed new Soldier Field. The biggest issue has always been how cut off the stadium is from the surrounding area. Even if you take the red line to Roosevelt, you still have a 45 minute walk to the gate. And after the game any pedestrian exiting the game on the north side of the stadium is bottlenecked right by the Field Museum so it takes even longer to walk out of there. The new lakefront site is even more cut off from pedestrian access. At least Arlington Park would have a Metra station that would alleviate those issues.

Just force everyone on to 290/53 and have them figure it out from there.

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Not the worst idea in the world you Douchebag.

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College towns figure it out with far less access to highways and larger stadiums.

Sure it’ll suck before/after most events if you live in the area, but look at the bright side - nobody else will care!

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That's why the 78 makes more sense for the Bears than it does for the Sox. Short walk from Museum Campus for our Indiana/south-burb friends, short walk from Roosevelt for everybody else. If you want to do shuttles from the West Loop terminals, that's easy enough.

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Yeah, that's assuming the Bears even care about the fan experience at all, which I'm not convinced they do. Kevin Warren's obsession with lakefront establishing shots of the stadium seems to indicate they wouldn't put it anywhere but the lakefront, even though they claimed to look at dozens of sites. I still continue to believe the lakefront stadium is the world's worst leverage play and Kevin Warren is a bit of a rube when it comes to the city of Chicago.

College towns are some of the most walkable cities in America!


I think someone here in one thread or another posited that Warren is really just angling for commissioner by pulling off the impossible and getting a lakefront stadium in Chicago. He's delusional if he thinks he can get that job, but at least it's more plausible and more respectable than being unable to comprehend the idea of taking B-roll of Grant Park and then cutting to the game.

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He's all ambition and it's so transparent. All those puff pieces on Bears.com about him read as desperate and phony, he badly miscalculated the appetite for not only the stadium but also for Kevin Warren personal information. He may think that washing his car indoors at his luxury building makes him look like a man of the people but it doesn't.

The northwest suburbs aren't that wealthy. The Barringtons, yes, Park Ridge, maybe, but most of the area is firmly middle-class, and Bears tickets are already very expensive before a new stadium.

St. Charles/Geneva? Lake in the Hills? Barrington, for sure? Naperville itself? I think you're wrong.

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Ба́бушка гада́ла, да на́двое сказа́ла—то ли до́ждик, то ли снег, то ли бу́дет, то ли нет.

This person has never attended a college football game. In fact, he may not even know what a college football game is.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Lake in the Hills?!?

Well, anyway, doesn't matter, stadium isn't happening here. I look forward to the land being used for something more useful and less ugly.

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College towns will host games in stadiums that hold multiples of the town’s population with little more than a highway exit.

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What would be more useful? More sprawling houses when that is most of what exists for 10 miles in every direction?

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I would love for it to become all residential.