Illinois state officials are continuing to walk back their rhetoric against state funding for a Chicago Bears stadium, at least when it comes to infrastructure. Following Gov. JB Pritzker’s statement earlier this week that “we help private businesses all the time in the state, and I want to help” and that there’s “absolutely a way” Illinois could help with infrastructure, House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch — who just last week said it was “insensitive” to talk about giving the Bears ownership money when people have real needs like rent and health care costs — said yesterday that he’d consider both infrastructure spending and tax breaks for a Bears stadium in Arlington Heights:
“I’m very happy to hear the Bears emphasizing that they’re going to pay for their own stadium. Infrastructure? We’ve always said that’s a conversation we’d love to have. That area needs infrastructure anyway. If it’s because the Bears are there, that’s a plus,” Welch said.
Calculating what’s actually infrastructure and what’s just a slush fund for stadium spending by another name is always a dodgy business. Local governments often (though not always) cover the costs of things like roads and sewer hookups for new developments, but past stadium deals have often taken an expansive view of what “infrastructure” means, including such things as new highways and new train stations and new bridges and new parking garages and even stadium foundations and stairs. (One memorable example from my neck of the woods: The $55 million minor-league baseball stadium that New York City built for the Brooklyn Cyclones in 2001 got the benefit of a new $282 million subway terminal that was approved at the same time; while the old station was certainly in need of repairs, it was also undeniably skipped to the head of the line because of the baseball team’s demands.) Bears execs have floated a staggering $855 million price tag for Arlington Heights infrastructure, including new highway ramps and relocating a Metra train station, something the Chicago Tribune editorial board summed up as beginning to “morph into subsidy.”
And, of course, the Bears owners aren’t just looking for state infrastructure (or “infrastructure”) spending, but also for “tax certainty,” by which they mean paying only what property taxes would be for an unimproved Arlington Heights property, not for one with a stadium and other development and giant bear statues on it. And Welch now says he’d be fine with that too, maybe probably:
“There’s a bill out there called PILOT, payment in lieu of taxes. That is a bill that has been percolating the General Assembly for about a year now and we’re having conversation around that. Certainly, if we can get something going on that, that would be helpful in the Bears staying here and staying in Arlington Heights,” Welch said.
That’s not really what PILOTs are — the term is just a catch-all for any agreement to exempt a property from taxes and accept side payments instead. But in this case, the bill under consideration would allow the Bears to pay less in PILOTs than they would normally pay in property taxes, which combined with the infrastructure demands would bring the public cost to well over $1 billion. That’s some serious morphing!
The context of all this, of course, is that Bears officials announced that they’d think about moving to Indiana if they could get stadium subsidies there, and even sent NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to go wander around there, as his job description entails. As for what actual Illinoisans think of all this stadium-costs-but-not-really spending, that’s not entirely clear, because nobody’s asking them in quite that detail. A new poll found that 58% of state voters think it’s important for the Bears to stay in Illinois, but also that 58% opposed using public funding to get them to stay. Would they count $1 billion in tax breaks and infrastructure spending as “public funding”? Crap, forgot to put that question in the poll, better try again. Or not — if state officials do decide they’re okay covering off-the-books stadium costs, it might be convenient not to know whether their constituents were opposed to it or not.
The giant bear statues are pretty cool, I think.
Denver has a giant blue bear at its convention center. For me, that is the highlight of any visit to Denver.
@Reed: you’re just going to completely ignore Blucifer at the Denver airport?
I never wander. Everything I am told to do I am told to do in a targetted and focussed manner. Laserlike focus. For which I am famous and, as I would like many people to have said, rightly so.
The people of Illinois paid for a really crappy stadium on the lakefront. Actually two. But that is not the Bears fault. It is important to remember that the Bears are the victims in all this. Just because they demanded the state build them a new stadium and pay for it – under threat of leaving – does not absolve the city and state from the decision to build it.
It is not the Bears fault that they hired a lousy firm to build it and then insisted on a design that turned out to be horrendous. These things happen in business, especially altruistic social services like the not-for-profit National Football League.
We exist to serve and all we are asking is for a little help. Couple billion here, few billion there. Just like any other American gets.
I find it hard to believe the NFL would allow the Bears to enter Indiana since it’s the Colts market. That’s like the Bears entering in Wisconsin, knowing the Packers own the Wisconsin market.