With Chicago Options ‘Exhausted,’ Bears Focus on Arlington Heights and Hammond

The Bears reiterated Thursday they plan to leave Chicago as they continue to look at building a stadium in suburban Illinois or Hammond, Indiana.

“The Chicago Bears have exhausted every opportunity to stay in Chicago, which was our initial goal,” the team said in a statement. “There is not a viable site in the city. As a result, the only sites under consideration are in Arlington Heights and Hammond.”

The statement, which appears to again close the door on staying in Chicago, comes after team president Kevin Warren said last month at the NFL meetings in Arizona that the Bears were hoping to choose a new site for an enclosed stadium in Illinois or Indiana late this spring or early in the summer.

The Bears have played at Soldier Field for more than half a century. Indiana lawmakers are attempting to lure them from the Windy City with a plan to finance and build a domed stadium in Hammond, about 25 miles from their current home on Lake Michigan’s shore.

The Illinois General Assembly responded with legislation that would give tax breaks to so-called megaprojects of at least $100 million, a plan that would encompass the Bears’ proposal to build a complex on a 326-acre tract of land they own in Arlington Heights.

“Both of the sites are excellent sites,” Warren said last month.

The Bears are a charter NFL franchise that has played in Illinois since the team’s founding in 1920 as the Decatur Staleys. Since moving to Chicago in 1921, the Bears have never owned their stadium, whether playing at Wrigley Field from 1921 to 1970 or Soldier Field since.

Reporting by the Associated Press.