Last week, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and state senate president Don Harmon both told the Chicago White Sox and Bears owners they should get together to plan a joint stadium deal, after news that the two teams would be targeting the same hotel tax money to help pay construction costs. This week, developer Related Midwest says it is working on getting the two teams to form just such a united front:
“We’re working with them … to have a financing partnership that makes sense for us and for them and for the city and the state,” President of Related Midwest Curt Bailey told the [Chicago] Sun-Times.
While only having to manage one piece of proposed subsidy legislation would certainly make things easier logistically for Illinois officials, it’s hard to see how it’s in the public’s advantage to have the people on the other side of the bargaining table collaborating against you instead of competing with each other. Certainly in other cities where teams have teamed up — the New York Yankees and Mets come to mind, and more recently the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles — it’s been more a case of whichever team seems better positioned politically taking the lead, while the other is content to sit back and say, “We’ll have what they’re having.” And the resulting subsidies, in such cases, can be record-breaking.
So far, Pritzker has made noises about wanting to ensure that state taxpayers would get a return on any public stadium spending, but it’s impossible to say whether he means real ROI or just clown job projections.
In the midst of all this, the Chicago Reader interviewed Sean Dinces, author of the book Bulls Market, which is about the city’s NBA team’s profiteering juggernaut, and he had a relevant tidbit to share about the last time owner Jerry Reinsdorf extracted stadium money for the White Sox:
I remember reading [Commissioner of Economic Development Robert] Mier and [Mayor Harold] Washington’s memos about the White Sox stadium in the Chicago History Museum’s archives. They viewed the situation as we have to do this because we’re expending so much political capital on other reform initiatives that we can shoot ourselves in the foot by being the administration that lost the White Sox. I don’t think the Washington administration was under the illusion that the White Sox stadium was going to be a major economic development for the city; they were clear-eyed that it was largely theater.
Saying “We’re not going to come out ahead in this deal, we’re just doing it to keep the team from moving” is a certain kind of clear-eyed, certainly — though given that Reinsdorf later admitted that his move threats were fake, maybe it’s better described as a certain kind of being under an illusion. And Dinces himself suggests that Chicagoans could do worse than to urge Mayor Brandon Johnson to hold a strong line and tell the team owners if they don’t like it they can go pound sand:
Honestly, I don’t think that people are realistic when they catastrophize over calling the team’s bluff. The chances are overwhelming that the team’s not going to go anywhere. Usually, this is just a bluff to see how much you can take advantage of gullible politicians and the public.
So far, calling team owners’ bluffs doesn’t seem to be how Johnson is thinking, if his asking White Sox management to collaborate on press statements around their stadium proposal is any indication. So far we’re very much in the initial jockeying stage of the White Sox and Bears’ stadium demands, but the tea leaves do not say promising things about how it’s likely to turn out for Illinois taxpayers.
I’m sure the Bears and Sox will some how pull this off, but I think they will have to work Mayor Johnson. I don’t see this being a priority for Gov. Pritzker. It’s not a political winner for him. When Gov Thompson made the Sox deal in the late 1980s he was looking for more Chicago area support to go with his downstate votes. Pritzker is very popular in Chicago, and that’s all an Illinois Democrat needs. “Saving” the Bears and Sox won’t gain him any more votes. Especially if it includes a tax increase.
Mayor Johnson seems amenable, but doesn’t control most of the tax money. So it’s going to require talking Pritzker and the legislature into these deals, though admittedly Johnson can help with that, and seems intent on doing so.
Yeah, probably ends up as a package deal. “The Rural Hospital, School Buildings and Stadium Act of 2025.” Let Johnson take the stadium heat, while Pritzker tours ground breaking for new schools and hospitals.
I do like that related Midwest updated the renderings with a green river for St Patrick’s Day.
I read recently that the wnba Chicago sky want a new practice facility. They will certainly have their hand out also.
You see this as having disastrous results for the taxpayers, I see this as a billionaire monkey knife fight.
No way two rich people are going to work together for a cut of the profits when one of them can just have ALL the profits. The only downside is that taxpayers will be on the hook for studies that ultimately lead nowhere and unbuilt construction sites, but at least we’re going to have something to laugh at in these dark times.
You would think, but “monkey knife fight” is not how it’s gone down in the past. Billionaires are pretty good at making nice once it’s explained to them that they’re not fighting over one pie, they’re collaborating on getting someone else to give them free lifetime pie subscriptions.
As Kramer once said “Artie! Why does the salesman have to die? Why???”
The Harold Washington quote is interesting because Brandon Johnson is in very much the same situation. Even more than just being seen as not losing the Sox/Bears, BJ could really use some ‘victories.’ Facilitating a deal for two new sports stadiums may not be the victory his supporters were hoping for, but everyone gets excited when the cranes start moving steel beams, right? Besides, how many Chicago mayors tried and failed to get a suitable Bears stadium done (I assume the Bears are staying in Chicago in this scenario?)?
To build on mb’s suggestion, maybe this is the “The Rural Hospital, Affordable Housing, School Buildings and Stadium Act of 2025.”
da Bears are not leaving the Chicago area, and how many Bears fans care if they’re in Chicago, Arlington Heights, Naperville or Gurnee. Just as long as they beat Green Bay. The Whie Sox should never have built that monstrosity of a stadium, and definitely not on 35th street. Reinsdorf wanted a new stadium at 35th and the Ryan, big Jim Thompson twisted arms to give it to him, so tough @#$%. If you want a nother new stadium in the South Loop, pay for it yourself. If Reinsdorf is dumb enough to think Nashville White Sox sounds good, then his dementia is getting worse.
He absolutely doesn’t think that. He just knows that all he has to do is mention it and weak-ass politicians will fall over themselves to hand him taxpayer dollars and lots of them.
Also… the United Center turns 30 in a few months.
Just sayin’
Was just at the United Center recently. They’ve spent many times the initial cost over the years to expand and update it, you’d never know it was that old.
Now, if someone wants to help them with a ballpark village type development…
The Bears’ new chief operating officer is being tasked with getting their new stadium built. Don’t the Bears own Arlington Park already? Or do they plan to play “Flip or Flop” with that valuable parcel in the northwest suburbs?
At least Northwestern University will tear down and rebuild Ryan Field in north suburban Evanston with zero government money involved.