LINCOLN PARK, CHICAGO — The Society has been watching the Bears' real-estate adventures, and has a few things to say.
We'll start plainly. The Bears belong in Illinois. The word "Chicago" is in the name. We checked.
Stadium decisions are complicated. There are sites and figures and projections, and men in good suits have studied all of it. We are not those men. We're a women's society in Lincoln Park with a strong feeling, and the feeling is that a team named for this city should stay within driving distance of people who can spell its neighborhoods.
On Indiana
A move to Hammond has entered the discussion. The Society would prefer to keep its game-day arrangements in Illinois.
Several Members have begun asking who would drive. No one has volunteered yet.
On the Racetrack
Review the sequence with us, because we had to read it twice. The Bears bought Arlington Park — the historic racetrack, a hundred years of it. Paid handsomely. Tore it down. And now they may build the stadium in a different state.
We're not angry. It's closer to impressed.
If the stadium is built elsewhere, Arlington Heights will need another plan for the former racetrack. The Society would like a shopping district with good landscaping and somewhere pleasant to have lunch. It has supplied this suggestion without being consulted.
The Spaceship
If the team leaves, the city keeps Soldier Field — which it still owes roughly $533 million on, from the 2003 renovation that dropped a glass bowl into the colonnades and earned the name "the spaceship that landed on the Parthenon." The debt doesn't care whether the Bears stay. Debts don't.
The building shouldn't sit empty. Some options: the world's largest Champagne Brunch (the bowl seats sixty-one thousand, which solves our patio problem permanently). A covered farmers' market. An indoor dog park for the senior pups of the lakefront. Or leave it as is and charge admission to look at it.
A Counterproposal
If the team must move — and it must not — there's a cleared parcel a short walk from the village that nobody is using. Lincoln Yards. Put the stadium there. We would tolerate the traffic, the noise, even the people, provided they parked correctly and understood they were guests. This is the most generous offer the Society has ever extended, and it will not be repeated.
In Closing
We hold no authority over the Bears, the McCaskey family, the NFL, or Indiana. We're commenting anyway. Keep the Bears in Illinois. Build the mall. Do something with the spaceship. And stop tearing things down before you've decided what goes in their place.
— Issued by the Office of the Executive Director.