Oh hey look, it’s Chicago Bears Arlington Heights stadium renderings freshly released … in November? Well, freshly published by NBC Sports Chicago, anyway, that’s a good enough excuse to dive in:
So let’s see, we have a whole lot of trees displaying attractively variegated fall colors, plus some buildings with trendy green roofs to help reduce atmospheric warming. (I hope they’re just green roofs, anyway; if they’re actual rooftop parks, then anyone visiting them is at risk of plummeting to their deaths since there are no railings. Is the death plunge some new NFL design requirement?) In the distance sits a Bears stadium so ill-defined that it’s actually translucent — will fans be required to dress in invisibility cloaks to maintain the aesthetic?
Shopping bags! So very many shopping bags! Clearly a main attraction of this stadium district will be buying things at the BEARSELL store, and then walking directly into a planter full of flowers. (This image also reveals that the Bears stadium will be part of the Logan’s Run extended cinematic universe, given that all fans over 30 have been sent to Carrousel.)
I would dearly love to expound on what the hell that family in the right middle ground is doing (practicing for Cirque du Soleil tryouts?), but we simply must move on to that enormous bear slide in the background. How do children actually get on the slide? Do they have to climb up the interior of the bear, helter-skelter-style? Or maybe it’s not a slide, just a wooden sculpture of a bear installing ductwork. I am not sure which is more disturbing, frankly, but either way it’s going to haunt my nightmares.
Proposed new slang term for distracting people from a project’s multi-billion-dollar price tag with pretty pictures unrelated to the whole point of the project: “Deploying the kayaks.”
Vaportecture renderers sure do love giant flags. And people walking into planters. This is not the best use of the Gen Z Colorforms play set.
Nothing to see here, just a bunch of buildings and more trees and a public sports field and … um, what is that? Is that an enormous bear, dressed in a Bears jersey, about to pounce on the youth football players? Or a statue of a bear dressed in a Bears jersey, I’m not sure that’s any better? Oh, I will not sleep well tonight.
The Bears owners are seeking an undefined but doubtless stupendous amount of tax kickbacks in order to build all this. No bears were available for comment.
Ah yes; flowers, kayaks, shopping bags, a slide, a father playing with his child…truly hell on earth.
It was all fun and kayaks until they were eaten by Bears Bear.
Biergarten? Why not BEARtgarten? So little imagination. (Come to think of it, there may already be a bar called Bear-garden in Chicago, but it’s a completely different scene.)
This has a late 1980s look to it. When many Chicago businesses moved to suburban corporate campuses. But then moved back to the city in the 2000s, before moving to work-from-home concepts in the 2020s. None of that green space is generating revenue. The quickest return for the Bears is to surround the stadium with acres of $50+ parking. That’s over a million dollars per game of parking revenue. That one train line isn’t going to get 70,000 people to the game.
Credit the Bears for taking vaportecture to its logical conclusion with a stadium that appears not to exist.
… in keeping with the Bears offense…
You want us to show you the actual stadium? Show us some of that sweet public funding.
The Bears dream strategy would be: “we’ll develop the money making office park stuff, while you develop the money losing stadium and transit stuff. It’s a win-win, for us.”
The ‘translucent’ stadium is like a colonoscopy, you will only see the result, once you administer the BEARium.
nice.
OK, John, did you not like my similar variation on the Phoenix Rising ‘stadium’ article?
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2023/02/17/19674/friday-roundup-bears-buy-stadium-land-but-wont-promise-to-build-stadium-on-it-and-other-confusing-news-of-the-week/#comments
I did see it. It was good, but less… ummm…. invasive.
And given that what we are talking about is ordinary citizens who mostly can’t afford tickets to a sports team being forced to subsidize that team through their taxes, well, the colonoscopy angle seemed to really… um…. fit.
It’s typically quite difficult to judge scale and distance on a 2d rendering (no matter how many ladies hailing cabs or giant foam finger images are included).
However, the mysterious translucent ellipse shown in the Novemberender does not appear to be anywhere near modern NFL stadium size. In fact, unless it is actually planned to be several miles NW (?) of Arlington heights itself, it would appear to be about a third of the size of an NFL stadium. Not that it actually exists of course… can something that really isn’t there be either too big or too small for it’s intended purpose? Was Niels Bohr involved in the design of this facility? That would explain a great deal…
Mayor Lightfoot chimes in: “We can… really maximize the revenues for the Bears.”
At least the Bears and the mayor agree on what exactly is the government’s job.
You clearly do not understand the concept of a schematic rendering. They don’t even have any design documentation in place.
These are literally worthless at this point… its only purpose is to get people excited about possibilities and vote in its favor. 100% of these rendering could be different by the end of this project.
Be that as it may, the die has been cast… if the stadium is not completely transparent, I ain’t going.
I mean, there’s a reason this is under the “vaportecture” category. That it will never get built like this doesn’t make it any less hilarious that they’re pretending it will.
I think Arlington Heights is the best move. People will spend more time and money building a complex that is impossible to duplicate at the lakefront. Parking is absolutely ridiculously expensive at Soldier Field. Nowhere to go after the game. No need to take buses when you get off the train in Arlington. It is a nightmare from the burbs to Soldier field. 2 trains then you need to take shuttle buses back and forth or pay $80/to $100 to park and sit in horrible traffic in and out. Arlington Park gets a from me. I really don’t care if they are called the Chicago Bears, Arlington Bears, Cook County Bears, illinois Bears. The mistake that was made was the City had to preserve those stupid columns and that hindered the City from building a better stadium
The article’s author is an idiot. That’s not a personal attack. It’s just facts.
Gotta disagree with you there (on the personal attack part; I’m not in the most objective position to say whether I’m an idiot). But attacks on me are exempt, so go to town if that floats your boat.