Category: Chicago White Sox

The writing was already on the wall that a Chicago Bears lakefront stadium with a $2.65 billion public price tag wasn’t likely to get fast-tracked in the state legislature, and this weekend it became more or less official. Per the Chicago Tribune:

State Sen. Bill Cunningham of Chicago, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, said there would be no action on the team’s request before the legislature adjourns for the spring.

State Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago, a member of House Democratic leadership, likewise said the team’s quest for a new home to replace aging Soldier Field, which lies in his district, isn’t on the legislative agenda in the waning days of session.

“It’s fair to say that there won’t be any Bears action … in this legislative session, which I think is fine,” Buckner said Saturday at the Illinois State Capitol. “I think a proposal of this magnitude deserves sunlight and scrutiny. And very often what has happened in this building is that things get rammed through at the last minute without much public input or transparency.”

Translation, probably: There needs to be a whole lot more haggling behind the scenes before we can ram something through without much public input. Or, before we can tell Bears execs not to let the door hit them on the way out. Lots of ways this can still go, but no decisions are going to be made until the fall at the earliest.

Oh, and same goes for White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s own $2 billion stadium subsidy demand:

Cunningham also said there would be no movement during the spring session on the Chicago White Sox requests to get public assistance for their new stadium proposal.

Another state legislator, Sen. Robert Peters, whose district covers Soldier Field, said Thursday that he wanted to see the Bears, White Sox, Chicago Red Stars women’s soccer and Chicago Sky WNBA teams to figure out a unified effort rather than all asking for the same tax money, so that may be how this plays out when everyone regroups in the fall. It’s honestly not the best negotiating tactic — hey, all you guys get your lobbyists together and gang up on us — but if it cuts the total ask, then maybe? There’s a scenario where the Bears and White Sox owners only come away with $1 billion in public money each and we’re all supposed to see that as a victory for taxpayers; maybe I’ve been doing this too long and am hopelessly negative, but my pessimism has served me well in the past, so we’ll see.

Things are not going smoothly at all for the Chicago White Sox and Bears stadium plans, with White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf facing criticism not just for his record-shattering $2 billion public subsidy demand but for his ties to a guy who did jail time in Iraq for trying to assassinate the prime minister, while pretty much everyone hates on Bears owner Virginia Halas McCaskey’s lakefront domed stadium plan. Time for the billionaires to seize control of the narrative! Which means splashy stadium announcements — but first, to prime the pump and maximize air time, announcements of those announcements:

• Bears officials issued a statement yesterday that they plan to issue a statement on Wednesday presenting a “state-of-the-art, publicly owned enclosed stadium” near Soldier Field on the Lake Michigan lakefront. The Chicago Tribune reports that “the team has pledged to spend $2 billion in private money” while “the cost of the stadium is estimated at $2.5 billion to $3 billion, plus $1 billion for associated roads and other infrastructure.” For the math-challenged, that leaves $1.5 billion to $2 billion to be covered by taxpayers — not including the presumed exemption from property taxes that would come with a publicly owned stadium, and assuming the team’s $2 billion is really $2 billion.
• Reinsdorf had “a source close to” him, which could easily be Reinsdorf himself, tell Crain’s Chicago Business that he is totally willing to put in some of his own money toward a $1.25 billion stadium, which would be part of a massive South Loop redevelopment project on land owned by Nadhmi Shakir Auchi, the aforementioned ex-con Iraqi real estate baron. Reinsdorf’s avatar didn’t specify how much money, mind you, but different sock puppets “close to negotiations” told Crain’s that “Reinsdorf has mentioned a figure of $200 million or more.” This earned the ur–savvy negotiator the Crain’s headline “Reinsdorf offers to open wallet for new Sox stadium.”

Let’s take the Bears first. While we’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see whatever renderings and other distractions the team throws at the public, the intended framing here is clear: McCaskey, or whoever actually controls the 101-year-old owner’s bank account, plans on spending two billion dollars on a new stadium not in the suburbs, and all that’s left is for someone to figure out how to raise maybe another $2 billion, no problemo. While unlikely to immediately sway skeptical state officials, it’s the necessary first step to change the narrative from “you and Reinsdorf need to get together and figure out something that doesn’t cost taxpayers billions of dollars” to “oh, well, if you’re offering to pay for at least half of your insanely expensive stadium project, then maybe we can talk.”

As for the comparatively youthful Reinsdorf (he’s 88), offering $200 million while demanding $2 billion in public funds might seem like chump change. But his reality distortion field is strong, and he’s effectively managed to anchor people’s expectations to where him putting up any money at all might just feel like a win. (To Crain’s headline writers, anyway.) As with his Chicago NFL frenemies, Reinsdorf doesn’t need a winning argument just yet, he just needs to get the conversation off of his ten-digit subsidy demands and partner’s shooty past and onto what he’s willing to do for you, which is to generously pay for maybe 20% of his own stadium’s construction cost, something he should easily get back in property tax exemptions alone.

Tl;dr: The Bears and White Sox owners are still asking for close to $2 billion in tax money each to help pay for new stadiums so they can make more money, but they want it to seem like a bargain. There’s a ways to go to get there, but the payoff would be lucrative enough that it’s worth throwing rhetoric against the wall to see what sticks.

Let’s check in on the Chicago Bears and White Sox stadium situations, through assorted quotes that have appeared in what’s left of newspapers:

• “[There is] next to no appetite to fund a new [White Sox] stadium with taxpayer dollars.” — Illinois state senate president Don Harmon
• “If the Bears can get it done in Chicago, I think they’ll try to do it. If they can’t get it done in Chicago, this is just me guessing, I think they’re going to be right back here [in Arlington Heights].” — Arlington Heights school district lobbyist John Dunn
• “Mr. Auchi never met or spoke to Saddam Hussein.” — attorneys for Nadhmi Shakir Auchi, the 86-year-old Iraqi-British billionaire who owns the South Loop land where White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf wants to build his stadium

So, uh, yeah. The biggest bombshell, obviously, is the Chicago Sun-Times’ lengthy investigation of Auchi, who twice had visa applications rejected by the U.S. State Department on the grounds of “crimes of moral turpitude,” which may or may not be related to that time in 1959 when he and Hussein were among 78 Iraqis convicted of trying to assassinate that country’s prime minister, Abdul-Karim Qasim. (Qasim had taken power himself in a military coup that had assassinated the previous prime minister, and was eventually overthrown and killed four years later in a suspected CIA-backed plot.) Auchi has been operating through his property manager the Related Companies, and until now had mostly stayed out of the spotlight.

That Reinsdorf’s partner in his proposed downtown development is a foreign billionaire with a history of light murder plots may not be the most important part of his $2 billion subsidy demand, but it’s certainly not going to help at a time when state officials are already unenthused about the idea: The same Sun-Times article that quoted Harmon continued, “There might be some [state legislative] members who could be open to the idea, but there simply aren’t nearly enough of those folks right now to cobble together a majority of 30 votes in the Senate and 60 in the House and a governor’s signature.” So Reinsdorf — and Bears owner Virginia Halas McCaskey, who at 101 is a whole 13 years older than the White Sox owner — need a groundswell of support to get stadium deals done in their lifetimes, and questions of exactly how chummy his real estate partner was with Saddam Hussein aren’t likely to help.

Of course, this is Chicago, and this is real estate, and lots of funny things can happen when both those things are involved. One more quote:

• “I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel as though there’s an entire world going on out there I know nothing about.” — Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Rick Telander

You said it, Rick! Not sure I would have admitted it in the newspaper column where I’m paid to know things and write about them, but points for honesty.

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.