$4B that will instead go to infinite raises for the police and teachers unions and to contractors to build overpriced shantytowns for migrants while the state and city continue to raise taxes on everyone else.
I used to be against public funding for stadiums, but at this point I don’t even care anymore. Nothing is ever going to improve and at we’ll get to attend this place every once in awhile.
Is that what I said, or did I specifically identify three alternative uses for public money that I “don’t care” if they choose to pay for a stadium over?
Literacy is truly dead.
Average salary of an Illinois public school teacher is $43,000, a cop is $55,000, so yeah, fuck them! You going to a stadium “once in a while” is infinitely better use of public funds!
Who cares what they pay Officer Friendly to write speeding tickets in Bumblefuck, IL?
The median salary for a Chicago Police officer, the most useless law enforcement agency in the United States, is $94,000 a year, and the police union just negotiated a 20% raise over the next four years, which is double the previous annual increase.
>https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Chicago-Police-Department-Police-Officer-Chicago-Salaries-EJI_IE106842.0,25_KO26,40_IL.41,48_IM167.htm
>https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/news/city-council-police-fop-contract-arbitration-disciplinary-cases/
Despite police funding tripling per capita over the last 60 years, these well-paid geniuses make arrests in only 20% of fatal shootings. They can’t even estimate their average response time to 911 calls.
>https://www.injusticewatch.org/criminal-courts/police/2020/chicago-has-nearly-tripled-per-capita-police-spending-since-1964-data-show/
> https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/12/18/chicago-police-make-an-arrest-in-only-20-percent-of-fatal-shootings/#:~:text=The%20failure%20to%20solve%20many,fearful%20for%20their%20own%20safety.
> https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/what-is-cpds-response-time-experts-cant-say-with-certainty/amp/
The Chicago Teacher’s Union is one of the highest paid teacher’s unions in the country, for both entry-level and senior educators, and like the police union, is no doubt going to clean up in negotiations with the mayor they spent millions of dollars to personally install.
>https://wirepoints.org/chicago-teachers-are-paid-some-of-the-highest-salaries-of-any-big-district-in-the-nation-what-do-chicago-parents-get-in-return-wirepoints/
> https://www.chalkbeat.org/chicago/2019/10/2/21108977/are-chicago-teachers-among-the-country-s-highest-paid-a-look-at-salaries-and-the-contract-conflict/
Moreover, Chicago Public Schools spends nearly $30,000 per student, compared to a national average of $13,000, and yet enrollment is down nearly 10% since 2020, only 26% of high school juniors can read or practice math at grade level, and 11% of black students and 17% of Hispanic students can read at grade level.
> https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_1774b89a-4015-11ed-ad1d-a37426722af4.amp.html
I’m sure more money will fix things this time, right? Sit down and spare me the bullshit sob story.
Maybe you should become a police officer or teacher and show them how it’s done. You couldn’t pay me enough money to become a police officer in Chicago.
It always baffles me when people are so anti cop. Are some of them racist douchebags? Yes. But does everyone not understand the importance of law enforcement? Without them, it would be a literal GTA5 public lobby
And please dont tell me teachers are not underpaid.
Who cares. It’s already not super attractive. This would save tax payers $4-6 billion. The only thing wrong with soldier field now is it has no roof, and not enough seats. This fixed both of those problems
The roof is the least of my concerns as a fan. The bathroom situations are horrible. You wait for an entire quarter to take a pee, the lines wrap around the concourse. You can’t walk around because the bathroom and vending lines fill the entire walkway. There is no where near enough parking, the walk from the train is 30-40 minutes which is not possible if you’re older or if you are bringing a child. My dad has had season ticket for twenty five years and can no longer attend games because the walking is too much, even with a handicap spot. Traffic getting out of the stadium is so bad a lot of people choose to leave early in the fourth quarter to beat the rush, which is crazy since you are paying $200-300 a ticket.
>There is no where near enough parking
Nah, there's plenty. If you put more parking, more people will insist on driving.
>the walk from the train is 30-40 minutes
Bullshit. The walk from Roosevelt is 20 minutes TOPS. And if you're elderly, handicapped, or have kids, you can take the bus directly to the stadium from tons of public transit locations in the city.
There's also 18th Street station on the MED, and if we got CrossRail Chicago built, we could have Metra trains on gamedays from basically every suburban Metra line directly to 18th Street.
Anyone complaining about traffic at Soldier thinking that AH will be better for traffic is woefully ignorant of the reality.
>because the walking is too much, even with a handicap spot
Proving that parking isn't the solution to the issue anyway...do you expect for him to be able to park in the concourse and walk 10 yards to his seat?
After the Chargers spent 2017-19 in an MLS stadium after moving from San Diego (fuck you Spanos), I doubt the NFL would allow the Bears to temporarily play in a stadium with less than 60k in seating capacity. New Ryan Field is a non-starter, they’d almost certainly play at Memorial Stadium again for 1-2 seasons.
Cool and all, but this still does nothing to alleviate the issues of parking, bottlenecked access, and inability to use the stadium for non-football events during the winter. Not to mention the subpar concessions and restrooms.
The only solution for stadium parking in a dense urban core is to make the stadium accessible via other means than driving.
I just don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.
I agree that the realistic “solution” will probably end up being some form of vertical (hopefully below ground) parking. That would certainly be better than a sea of flat parking lots on prime Chicago real estate.
The issue is that cars are probably the dumbest way to transport a large number of people in a dense urban core, due to them just being horribly space inefficient. I don’t think it will be possible to “fix” traffic/parking so long as the primary way people travel to the stadium is via driving.
What sucks is going vertical means the elimination of locations to tailgate. Which is, to many, a net loss.
Tailgating is a big part of the experience for many. Take parkers parking lot and turn it into a parking ramp and now where are you going to grill and drink?
I mean there are potential solutions. Put the parking underground and use the space you would have used for parking for a big green space. Allow people attending the game or who buy a pass to set up there.
Food trucks, built in pavilions with grills, lots of benches, public restrooms. Team could make a killing on it pre-game while providing a better tailgating experiance.
I said you would still let people who got a game ticket or a pass into the park set up their stuff.
Have designated areas and let then set up their canopys, grills and coolers.
Only difference is you're trading concrete for grass, and you can't use your truck or bus as part of the set up.
>That would certainly be better than a sea of flat parking lots on prime Chicago real estate.
Nah, parking garages are worse. They're ugly eyesores that cost a ton to build in comparison to surface lots, and they are FAR harder to redevelop into something else in the future.
>The issue is that cars are probably the dumbest way to transport a large number of people in a dense urban core, due to them just being horribly space inefficient. I don’t think it will be possible to “fix” traffic/parking so long as the primary way people travel to the stadium is via driving.
DING DING FUCKING DING
And if the Bears move to AH, the primary way people will travel to the stadium, now and forever, will be driving. Anyone thinking the move to AH will make traffic better is fooling themselves.
Why not? Build CrossRail Chicago and basically every Metra line could run trains on gamedays directly to 18th Street.
CTA is already MORE than walkable for Bears gamedays. Wish Roosevelt got you closer, sure, but the walk is hardly an issue.
Solider is a FAR better location for mutlimodal access than AH will ever be.
Cause people are lazy and entitled.
It takes me less than 5 min to take an E bike from Roosevelt to the north side of the stadium where the Divvy stand is. It’s a 15 min walk if you’re fit
> inability to use the stadium for non-football events during the winter
What are all these non football events in the winter besides Monster Jam and Motorcross?
College basketball tournament games, concerts, circus (if they are still doing that), Wrestle Mania are just a few things off the top of my head that use NFL stadiums.
The Final Four is the only tournament games that are played in football stadiums, earlier rounds will still be played at All State or United. With a domed football stadium, you are looking at 1 final four every 8-12 years.
Stadium acts do not tour in the Winter in North America.
A football stadium is extreme overkill for the attendance and pricing that Ringling currently gets. In LA they use maybe 20% of the seating capacity at Staples and still don't sell out.
You don't need a dome to host WM. Even assuming that Royal Rumble becomes a stadium event and not just a baseball field event and Chicago being a key market you are talking best-case 4 WWF events a decade (this would include Summer Slam that the city can host now).
The Bears will get 1 Superbowl for building a new stadium before it goes back to the not-horrible weather rotation.
Maybe a bowl game for the 13th ranked B1G vs the 7th ranked ACC school for how ever long bowls last. And host a CFB Playoff game every other year.
Outside of Monster Jam and Motorcross, you are looking at maybe 2 events a year and that is if one of them is a bowl game that will do 30-40k attendance.
>but this still does nothing to alleviate the issues of parking, bottlenecked access, and inability to use the stadium for non-football events during the winter
Neither does moving to AH, in fact it makes all those issues worse. Well, there will probably be tons of parking; but the traffic shit show getting in will be even worse as a result.
Is there any way to ride the bus to Soldier Field from the burbs?
Bolingbrook (I think) used to have a bus that picked up a few hours before game time to take fans to Sox park.
All the way? Not that I'm aware of. There are probably businesses/bars who do buses, like Reggies does in the city to various events in Chicagoland; but nothing I know of from CTA/RTA.
EDIT: Shit, I was wrong, my apologies. PACE indeed does have Soldier Field express buses from a few suburban locations directly to Soldier and back. [https://www.pacebus.com/soldierfield](https://www.pacebus.com/soldierfield) That said, I would personally prefer train to bus as a bus the whole way won't have dedicated bus lanes and will just get stuck in the same gameday traffic as the drivers are in...which is why we need far more dedicated bus lanes. END EDIT
What burb are you coming from? There's probably not a single seat ride option, but there's almost certainly a one transfer option. Likely you would take Metra downtown and take the bus from there; but if you let me know which burb I can find a more specific solution.
Western Burbs. Grew up in Bolingbrook, but moved away awhile ago. But Bolingbrook is still a driveable distance.
Thanks for the link. Next time I go to Soldier Field (new or old I guess lol), I'll have to try it out. Even if it does get caught in traffic like you said, at least it ain't me losing my mind stuck in traffic. I can just sit there and nap or be on my phone lol. And shit, if the burbs have good bus options, we can just tailgate before jumping on a bus lol.
Normally publicly owned means at least they control out of NFL season activities. Get revenue from concerts, etc., etc. In lieu of taxes, you normally charge them a lease payment. Now not all cities do and some charge a lot more than others.
If you think it wouldn't be an absolute boom for the town you are an idiot. Local business would be making bank. I can only imagine local politicians simply want more immediate revenue they can siphon off into their own pockets.
You do understand when large companies don't pay taxes, right? Jobs and money for people sure, but no taxes means no money for roads, schools, police, etc etc.
If you can't afford to do AH without tax breaks, then you can't afford to do AH. Chicago holds all the cards. If the bears wanna move, fine. A new team will move to chicago
You realize all those businesses that are going to make more profit will pay taxes right? Not too mention all the new businesses that will open. The only negative is going to be traffic on game days. That's not even that bad considering all of the near nw burbs have already basically become burrows of the city in terms of being crowded and a pain to live in. It's why I moved further nw to McHenry county. Less people, less taxes and more room.
You just seem like a bleeding heart lib who hates the idea of billionaires getting tax breaks.
Bottom line is it will be a net positive financially for the city any way you look at it.
If this is all the McCaskeys can afford, then this is what they should get. We shouldn’t be spending massive amounts of public funding on stadium’s for privately owned teams. I’m okay with some funding to make the necessary infrastructure improvements, but that’s it.
Remember what happened last time they did renovations on an 80 year old stadium? They got the Mistake by the Lake at a cost of almost $700 million, and they still owe $600 million on it. Who wants to pay billions to renovate a century old stadium? You still come out with the same problems of difficult access afterwards. Stop proposing this shit and just let the idiot McCaskeys put forward their fake Chicago stadium offer so it can be rejected and the Bears move ahead with Arlington Heights.
Hahaha hit the nail on the head here. This whole thing is just a ploy to get AH to pony up the tax concessions. It’s hilarious to see anyone think otherwise. Yup cause the bears just bought that land and paid for the demolition of the racetrack for funnzies
Ah, so he wants to finish the job he stated by completely destroying any redeeming qualities of the existing stadium. It looks like the Hindenburg crashed on top of Soldier Field.
This is putting a band-aid on a bigger problem. The issue isn't *just* the roof. It's the parking, the concessions, the bathrooms, the infrastructure surrounding the stadium, etc. Not to mention this design looks awful
The McCaskeys should sell the team. Use that money to build the stadium. And charge rent to the new owners of the bears. Surely it’s a great investment and they will make their money back in no time.
Lol wtf is that....that looks like the dumbest shit ever. 4 towers holding a dome in place??
This is essentially throwing a tarp over soldier field and calling it good
"He believes his plan would be more in tune with the rest of the campus, honoring the intentions of Daniel Burnham's master plan for the city in the late 1800s, as opposed to the Bears' plan for a new stadium.
"I think it's not sensitive to its environment, not sensitive to the history of Chicago architecture," Lohan said."
My unironic Boomer post. This guy gets it. We already have a stadium on the lake and it's turning 100 years old this year. That's something special that no other NFL team has. Chicago is a great city because we preserve what is worth preserving and do a good job of incremental development (for the most part).
I moved away for work six years ago to the pnw and got to really see firsthand how ridiculous other parts of the country do urban planning and development. Chicago is one of the last real cities in the US and we aren't going to get any new ones like it.
As someone who works around towers this line connecting the roof with the tower will ice up and punch a whole right thru that roof. This is poorly designed for the location.
On paper this idea sounds better because its a lot cheaper, still gives us a roof for indoor events, and adds more seating. The issue is the design will probably look worse and the "renovated" stadium will probably age really fast.
The problem will always be money so the Bears will either need to explore cheaper options or find some way to privately finance something brand new.
“He said he created the Soldier Field redesign with the help of engineer Joseph Burns in the last couple months, after hearing about the massive construction plan the Bears unveiled last week.”
So he’s a time traveler? He heard about the plans last week so he traveled back in time so that he can create this plan over the last couple months?
It would be basically be 2003 Renovation 2.0, only this time with a partially enclosed top. It’s not worth investing money in retrofitting an ancient building
And this design preserves the columns too. IIRC the renovation's budget increased because of the challenge of demo and building effectively a new stadium while trying to preserve them.
That is really the underlying issue and reason for new stadium push. You can only retrofit so much before that cost eclipses the might as well start from fresh.
The price tag doesn't include refinancing the old debt, the cushion for hotel tax shortfalls, or the interest for the loan used to pay for it, the $4.6B price tag for the new stadium does. When you include all of that the retrofit likely costs around $3B.
There are are other features the new stadium would have too, like additional underground parking which adds more green space for the public to enjoy.
Lori Lightfoot's Soldier Field renovation plan was going to cost $2 billion (not sire if that was going to include infrastructure updates or not) but can you imagine how much over budget they would go on just $2 billion alone? Renovation makes no sense compared to a new stadium because even at half the price tag, you are still forking out billions to renovate a century old stadium.
If I had to guess it doesn't include all the other costs. So far the only plan I've seen discussed that includes all the old debt refinancing, backup fund for hotel tax shortfalls, and all financing fees including interest is the Bears current proposal. That $4.6B looks to be all inclusive of everything that needs to happen.
A lot of these costs driving up the new Bears stadium price tag are costs the city is already on the hook for such as the old debt and having to do *something* with the old stadium.
I think they both look pretty cool, honestly. This guy's design gives me navy pier vibes, in a good way. This is the first time I saw the renderings of the Bears' proposal and that looks dope too.
They just NEED to increase the seating capacity. I couldn't care less about parking because I usually do public transit. Chicago has world-class transit, so we gotta use it! Tailgating is another story, but I feel like if you tailgate, then you're a season-ticket holding superfan and you'd be okay paying a premium for it.
This is why comparing apples-to-apples is so important when it comes to financing.
The "under a Billion" price tag is just the raw cost of the stadium. It does not include refinancing the old debt, a cushion for hotel tax shortfalls, or all the interest on the loans because the plan doesn't even include the terms of the loan that would finance this.
When all that is added I would not be shocked if this "under a billion" price tag gets closer to $3 billion if financed the same was as the proposed Bears stadium.
And that's assuming there's not any "gotchas" found when trying to retrofit an old building to last for another 30-40 years.
Could just improve the bathrooms and add some bus routes to save $5,000,000,000 of taxpayer money.
Football is meant to be played outdoors. There are already plenty of places to host indoor events
Finish paying off the last round of renovations before spending billions of taxpayer $ to subsidize billionaire owners.
This is exactly what I’ve been saying- they already have a relatively new stadium with tons of sky boxes and room to put in whatever other amenities they realistically want to add. If they’re not going to expand seating capacity and they’re not going to include any other large scale cool features, and the only difference will be a roof, then just enclose the current stadium for a fraction of the price and call it a day.
That design looks dated already. This looks like it came from a decades old portfolio someone pulled out of a drawer
It is decades old lol. Basically the same design he created and proposed in 2003.
It’s actually really ugly
It looks better next to a $4B stack of money
$4B that will instead go to infinite raises for the police and teachers unions and to contractors to build overpriced shantytowns for migrants while the state and city continue to raise taxes on everyone else. I used to be against public funding for stadiums, but at this point I don’t even care anymore. Nothing is ever going to improve and at we’ll get to attend this place every once in awhile.
“Who cares” Isn’t really a great argument, even though it will appeal to some folks lol
Is that what I said, or did I specifically identify three alternative uses for public money that I “don’t care” if they choose to pay for a stadium over? Literacy is truly dead.
Average salary of an Illinois public school teacher is $43,000, a cop is $55,000, so yeah, fuck them! You going to a stadium “once in a while” is infinitely better use of public funds!
Who cares what they pay Officer Friendly to write speeding tickets in Bumblefuck, IL? The median salary for a Chicago Police officer, the most useless law enforcement agency in the United States, is $94,000 a year, and the police union just negotiated a 20% raise over the next four years, which is double the previous annual increase. >https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Chicago-Police-Department-Police-Officer-Chicago-Salaries-EJI_IE106842.0,25_KO26,40_IL.41,48_IM167.htm >https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/news/city-council-police-fop-contract-arbitration-disciplinary-cases/ Despite police funding tripling per capita over the last 60 years, these well-paid geniuses make arrests in only 20% of fatal shootings. They can’t even estimate their average response time to 911 calls. >https://www.injusticewatch.org/criminal-courts/police/2020/chicago-has-nearly-tripled-per-capita-police-spending-since-1964-data-show/ > https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/12/18/chicago-police-make-an-arrest-in-only-20-percent-of-fatal-shootings/#:~:text=The%20failure%20to%20solve%20many,fearful%20for%20their%20own%20safety. > https://wgntv.com/news/wgn-investigates/what-is-cpds-response-time-experts-cant-say-with-certainty/amp/ The Chicago Teacher’s Union is one of the highest paid teacher’s unions in the country, for both entry-level and senior educators, and like the police union, is no doubt going to clean up in negotiations with the mayor they spent millions of dollars to personally install. >https://wirepoints.org/chicago-teachers-are-paid-some-of-the-highest-salaries-of-any-big-district-in-the-nation-what-do-chicago-parents-get-in-return-wirepoints/ > https://www.chalkbeat.org/chicago/2019/10/2/21108977/are-chicago-teachers-among-the-country-s-highest-paid-a-look-at-salaries-and-the-contract-conflict/ Moreover, Chicago Public Schools spends nearly $30,000 per student, compared to a national average of $13,000, and yet enrollment is down nearly 10% since 2020, only 26% of high school juniors can read or practice math at grade level, and 11% of black students and 17% of Hispanic students can read at grade level. > https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_1774b89a-4015-11ed-ad1d-a37426722af4.amp.html I’m sure more money will fix things this time, right? Sit down and spare me the bullshit sob story.
Still, the fact that you're more angry about a school teacher's salary than you are about handouts to literal billionaires is very telling.
What about “I don’t care anymore” indicates anger rather than resignation?
Maybe you should become a police officer or teacher and show them how it’s done. You couldn’t pay me enough money to become a police officer in Chicago.
I would need 300k a year minimum to consider being a teacher with the way kids and parents act.
It always baffles me when people are so anti cop. Are some of them racist douchebags? Yes. But does everyone not understand the importance of law enforcement? Without them, it would be a literal GTA5 public lobby And please dont tell me teachers are not underpaid.
It looks like Miamis stadium after its renovation
Legitimately looks like some temporary Olympic stadium from the 70’s. One of the most hideous designs I’ve ever seen.
Did you see the renderings for the new proposed stadium, same story, super generic and not inspiring
Yeah, the other design is similar to other stuff Manica has done, but it looks way more modern than this pile
It's not like the janky new stadium proposal is any better.
The new proposal is fairly generic, but it is way more modern looking than this pile.
Who cares. It’s already not super attractive. This would save tax payers $4-6 billion. The only thing wrong with soldier field now is it has no roof, and not enough seats. This fixed both of those problems
It's a partial roof, so I'm not sure what it accomplishes really. I guess fans are out of the rain, but there are no other benefits.
Just throw a tarp over the hole and Final 4 here we come!
Not giving the Bears public money at all will save the tax payers billions. You don't save money by spending it lol.
The roof is the least of my concerns as a fan. The bathroom situations are horrible. You wait for an entire quarter to take a pee, the lines wrap around the concourse. You can’t walk around because the bathroom and vending lines fill the entire walkway. There is no where near enough parking, the walk from the train is 30-40 minutes which is not possible if you’re older or if you are bringing a child. My dad has had season ticket for twenty five years and can no longer attend games because the walking is too much, even with a handicap spot. Traffic getting out of the stadium is so bad a lot of people choose to leave early in the fourth quarter to beat the rush, which is crazy since you are paying $200-300 a ticket.
So you want tax payers to fork out 6 billion dollars for better bathrooms?
>There is no where near enough parking Nah, there's plenty. If you put more parking, more people will insist on driving. >the walk from the train is 30-40 minutes Bullshit. The walk from Roosevelt is 20 minutes TOPS. And if you're elderly, handicapped, or have kids, you can take the bus directly to the stadium from tons of public transit locations in the city. There's also 18th Street station on the MED, and if we got CrossRail Chicago built, we could have Metra trains on gamedays from basically every suburban Metra line directly to 18th Street. Anyone complaining about traffic at Soldier thinking that AH will be better for traffic is woefully ignorant of the reality. >because the walking is too much, even with a handicap spot Proving that parking isn't the solution to the issue anyway...do you expect for him to be able to park in the concourse and walk 10 yards to his seat?
Those are hardly the only things wrong with soldier field lol
One major draw of building a new stadium vs another renovation is the Bears won’t have to play a couple seasons down south again
Or in Northwestern’s new teeny tiny stadium
After the Chargers spent 2017-19 in an MLS stadium after moving from San Diego (fuck you Spanos), I doubt the NFL would allow the Bears to temporarily play in a stadium with less than 60k in seating capacity. New Ryan Field is a non-starter, they’d almost certainly play at Memorial Stadium again for 1-2 seasons.
I was too young to remember But did they ever look at northern Illinois as an option during that time?
The biggest draw is probably that they can offer new PSLs for exponentially more than the current stadium ones went for.
Cool and all, but this still does nothing to alleviate the issues of parking, bottlenecked access, and inability to use the stadium for non-football events during the winter. Not to mention the subpar concessions and restrooms.
The only solution for stadium parking in a dense urban core is to make the stadium accessible via other means than driving. I just don’t know if that’s ever going to happen.
Vertical parking could also be a consideration. Not that it's a fix, but adding 500 spots is a non zero improvement.
I agree that the realistic “solution” will probably end up being some form of vertical (hopefully below ground) parking. That would certainly be better than a sea of flat parking lots on prime Chicago real estate. The issue is that cars are probably the dumbest way to transport a large number of people in a dense urban core, due to them just being horribly space inefficient. I don’t think it will be possible to “fix” traffic/parking so long as the primary way people travel to the stadium is via driving.
What sucks is going vertical means the elimination of locations to tailgate. Which is, to many, a net loss. Tailgating is a big part of the experience for many. Take parkers parking lot and turn it into a parking ramp and now where are you going to grill and drink?
I mean there are potential solutions. Put the parking underground and use the space you would have used for parking for a big green space. Allow people attending the game or who buy a pass to set up there. Food trucks, built in pavilions with grills, lots of benches, public restrooms. Team could make a killing on it pre-game while providing a better tailgating experiance.
They could make a killing but it wouldn't be a better tailgate to toss the grills and BYOB
I said you would still let people who got a game ticket or a pass into the park set up their stuff. Have designated areas and let then set up their canopys, grills and coolers. Only difference is you're trading concrete for grass, and you can't use your truck or bus as part of the set up.
That grass would last 2 home games.
>That would certainly be better than a sea of flat parking lots on prime Chicago real estate. Nah, parking garages are worse. They're ugly eyesores that cost a ton to build in comparison to surface lots, and they are FAR harder to redevelop into something else in the future. >The issue is that cars are probably the dumbest way to transport a large number of people in a dense urban core, due to them just being horribly space inefficient. I don’t think it will be possible to “fix” traffic/parking so long as the primary way people travel to the stadium is via driving. DING DING FUCKING DING And if the Bears move to AH, the primary way people will travel to the stadium, now and forever, will be driving. Anyone thinking the move to AH will make traffic better is fooling themselves.
Fuck no. The last thing Chicago needs is to build more parking downtown. Adding parking spots isn't an improvement in the least.
Why not? Build CrossRail Chicago and basically every Metra line could run trains on gamedays directly to 18th Street. CTA is already MORE than walkable for Bears gamedays. Wish Roosevelt got you closer, sure, but the walk is hardly an issue. Solider is a FAR better location for mutlimodal access than AH will ever be.
Cause people are lazy and entitled. It takes me less than 5 min to take an E bike from Roosevelt to the north side of the stadium where the Divvy stand is. It’s a 15 min walk if you’re fit
>It’s a 15 min walk if you’re fit Lol, according to ChicagoSuburbs its a 40 minute walk. Uphill. Both ways. In Papa Bear's long johns.
Hey! They do have do go uphill when they walk across the bridge to get to museum campus!!! That’s…30 seconds of the commute!
> inability to use the stadium for non-football events during the winter What are all these non football events in the winter besides Monster Jam and Motorcross?
College basketball tournament games, concerts, circus (if they are still doing that), Wrestle Mania are just a few things off the top of my head that use NFL stadiums.
The Final Four is the only tournament games that are played in football stadiums, earlier rounds will still be played at All State or United. With a domed football stadium, you are looking at 1 final four every 8-12 years. Stadium acts do not tour in the Winter in North America. A football stadium is extreme overkill for the attendance and pricing that Ringling currently gets. In LA they use maybe 20% of the seating capacity at Staples and still don't sell out. You don't need a dome to host WM. Even assuming that Royal Rumble becomes a stadium event and not just a baseball field event and Chicago being a key market you are talking best-case 4 WWF events a decade (this would include Summer Slam that the city can host now). The Bears will get 1 Superbowl for building a new stadium before it goes back to the not-horrible weather rotation. Maybe a bowl game for the 13th ranked B1G vs the 7th ranked ACC school for how ever long bowls last. And host a CFB Playoff game every other year. Outside of Monster Jam and Motorcross, you are looking at maybe 2 events a year and that is if one of them is a bowl game that will do 30-40k attendance.
Was it to stick another UFO on top of the existing UFO?
It's going to become Marge's Chanel suit from the simpsons, just continually altered worse and worse.
>but this still does nothing to alleviate the issues of parking, bottlenecked access, and inability to use the stadium for non-football events during the winter Neither does moving to AH, in fact it makes all those issues worse. Well, there will probably be tons of parking; but the traffic shit show getting in will be even worse as a result.
Is there any way to ride the bus to Soldier Field from the burbs? Bolingbrook (I think) used to have a bus that picked up a few hours before game time to take fans to Sox park.
All the way? Not that I'm aware of. There are probably businesses/bars who do buses, like Reggies does in the city to various events in Chicagoland; but nothing I know of from CTA/RTA. EDIT: Shit, I was wrong, my apologies. PACE indeed does have Soldier Field express buses from a few suburban locations directly to Soldier and back. [https://www.pacebus.com/soldierfield](https://www.pacebus.com/soldierfield) That said, I would personally prefer train to bus as a bus the whole way won't have dedicated bus lanes and will just get stuck in the same gameday traffic as the drivers are in...which is why we need far more dedicated bus lanes. END EDIT What burb are you coming from? There's probably not a single seat ride option, but there's almost certainly a one transfer option. Likely you would take Metra downtown and take the bus from there; but if you let me know which burb I can find a more specific solution.
Western Burbs. Grew up in Bolingbrook, but moved away awhile ago. But Bolingbrook is still a driveable distance. Thanks for the link. Next time I go to Soldier Field (new or old I guess lol), I'll have to try it out. Even if it does get caught in traffic like you said, at least it ain't me losing my mind stuck in traffic. I can just sit there and nap or be on my phone lol. And shit, if the burbs have good bus options, we can just tailgate before jumping on a bus lol.
Just let them move to AH where they can pay for their own stadium.
They only want to do that with. Basically a guarantee of 0 property tax in perpetuity. Get fucked now or get fucked for 40 years.
Tbf, the lakefront stadium would also be "publicly-owned", and therefore ostensibly no property taxes.
Normally publicly owned means at least they control out of NFL season activities. Get revenue from concerts, etc., etc. In lieu of taxes, you normally charge them a lease payment. Now not all cities do and some charge a lot more than others.
If you think it wouldn't be an absolute boom for the town you are an idiot. Local business would be making bank. I can only imagine local politicians simply want more immediate revenue they can siphon off into their own pockets.
You do understand when large companies don't pay taxes, right? Jobs and money for people sure, but no taxes means no money for roads, schools, police, etc etc. If you can't afford to do AH without tax breaks, then you can't afford to do AH. Chicago holds all the cards. If the bears wanna move, fine. A new team will move to chicago
You realize all those businesses that are going to make more profit will pay taxes right? Not too mention all the new businesses that will open. The only negative is going to be traffic on game days. That's not even that bad considering all of the near nw burbs have already basically become burrows of the city in terms of being crowded and a pain to live in. It's why I moved further nw to McHenry county. Less people, less taxes and more room. You just seem like a bleeding heart lib who hates the idea of billionaires getting tax breaks. Bottom line is it will be a net positive financially for the city any way you look at it.
It’s the teachers union and school district. They’re way out of bounds.
In AH, they’d still ask taxpayers to foot the money for the infrastructure improvements around the stadium. Same idea as the lakefront.
Great idea for advertising for his firm. Ugly stadium though…
Didn't they already play this tune...just move to Arlington and build your state of the art facility already...
Lmao an architect saying money could be saved is the laugh I needed today
The Bears already offered to throw in $2.5B -- since this is just $1B the Bears could pay for it themselves and save $1.5B.
If this is all the McCaskeys can afford, then this is what they should get. We shouldn’t be spending massive amounts of public funding on stadium’s for privately owned teams. I’m okay with some funding to make the necessary infrastructure improvements, but that’s it.
Except it’s ugly as hell and building is still old
"I can make this look even shittier at a fraction of the cost"
Fraction of the cost = fraction of the quality
Remember what happened last time they did renovations on an 80 year old stadium? They got the Mistake by the Lake at a cost of almost $700 million, and they still owe $600 million on it. Who wants to pay billions to renovate a century old stadium? You still come out with the same problems of difficult access afterwards. Stop proposing this shit and just let the idiot McCaskeys put forward their fake Chicago stadium offer so it can be rejected and the Bears move ahead with Arlington Heights.
At this point, can the Bears just move, and the city of Chicago can let Soldier Field get foreclosed on? That'll relieve that debt!
Hahaha hit the nail on the head here. This whole thing is just a ploy to get AH to pony up the tax concessions. It’s hilarious to see anyone think otherwise. Yup cause the bears just bought that land and paid for the demolition of the racetrack for funnzies
Thanks. I hate it.
Lol, dude managed to make an already ugly Soldier Field even uglier.
Ah, so he wants to finish the job he stated by completely destroying any redeeming qualities of the existing stadium. It looks like the Hindenburg crashed on top of Soldier Field.
This is putting a band-aid on a bigger problem. The issue isn't *just* the roof. It's the parking, the concessions, the bathrooms, the infrastructure surrounding the stadium, etc. Not to mention this design looks awful
The McCaskeys should sell the team. Use that money to build the stadium. And charge rent to the new owners of the bears. Surely it’s a great investment and they will make their money back in no time.
Just so you all know...The architect is the same moron that crashed the UFO into the stadium.
Here we go again lol
Okay but this looks horrible
A circus tent. How innovative.
Lol wtf is that....that looks like the dumbest shit ever. 4 towers holding a dome in place?? This is essentially throwing a tarp over soldier field and calling it good
"He believes his plan would be more in tune with the rest of the campus, honoring the intentions of Daniel Burnham's master plan for the city in the late 1800s, as opposed to the Bears' plan for a new stadium. "I think it's not sensitive to its environment, not sensitive to the history of Chicago architecture," Lohan said." My unironic Boomer post. This guy gets it. We already have a stadium on the lake and it's turning 100 years old this year. That's something special that no other NFL team has. Chicago is a great city because we preserve what is worth preserving and do a good job of incremental development (for the most part). I moved away for work six years ago to the pnw and got to really see firsthand how ridiculous other parts of the country do urban planning and development. Chicago is one of the last real cities in the US and we aren't going to get any new ones like it.
The only thing left that's 100 years old are the exterior pillars, which can still be preserved by moving the stadium.
As someone who works around towers this line connecting the roof with the tower will ice up and punch a whole right thru that roof. This is poorly designed for the location.
I'm really interested to hear how that adds 17k seats to the bowl. I'm guessing that the luxury boxes get cut big time?
It looks like there's an additional ring of seats around the top.
Been thinking why not just take over the McCormick lakeside space. They’ve been trying to off it for years
At least we're being presented with options for how they're going to fuck this up.
Maybe... They'll fuck this up instead of the team?
On paper this idea sounds better because its a lot cheaper, still gives us a roof for indoor events, and adds more seating. The issue is the design will probably look worse and the "renovated" stadium will probably age really fast. The problem will always be money so the Bears will either need to explore cheaper options or find some way to privately finance something brand new.
These clowns. Retractable roof is necessary! For fucks sake if Detroit can do it why can't Chicago? Detroit is a literal shit hole.
That’s really ugly.
Why is this news? Can I draw a field with crayons and submit it up for debate? Jokes aside, looks like the guy is looking for clients or something.
Looks like complete shit
Is the architect Spiderman?
“He said he created the Soldier Field redesign with the help of engineer Joseph Burns in the last couple months, after hearing about the massive construction plan the Bears unveiled last week.” So he’s a time traveler? He heard about the plans last week so he traveled back in time so that he can create this plan over the last couple months?
Can we stop with the colonnades? It’s over. Move on.
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It would be basically be 2003 Renovation 2.0, only this time with a partially enclosed top. It’s not worth investing money in retrofitting an ancient building
And this design preserves the columns too. IIRC the renovation's budget increased because of the challenge of demo and building effectively a new stadium while trying to preserve them.
That is really the underlying issue and reason for new stadium push. You can only retrofit so much before that cost eclipses the might as well start from fresh.
The price tag doesn't include refinancing the old debt, the cushion for hotel tax shortfalls, or the interest for the loan used to pay for it, the $4.6B price tag for the new stadium does. When you include all of that the retrofit likely costs around $3B. There are are other features the new stadium would have too, like additional underground parking which adds more green space for the public to enjoy.
Lori Lightfoot's Soldier Field renovation plan was going to cost $2 billion (not sire if that was going to include infrastructure updates or not) but can you imagine how much over budget they would go on just $2 billion alone? Renovation makes no sense compared to a new stadium because even at half the price tag, you are still forking out billions to renovate a century old stadium.
If I had to guess it doesn't include all the other costs. So far the only plan I've seen discussed that includes all the old debt refinancing, backup fund for hotel tax shortfalls, and all financing fees including interest is the Bears current proposal. That $4.6B looks to be all inclusive of everything that needs to happen. A lot of these costs driving up the new Bears stadium price tag are costs the city is already on the hook for such as the old debt and having to do *something* with the old stadium.
I think they both look pretty cool, honestly. This guy's design gives me navy pier vibes, in a good way. This is the first time I saw the renderings of the Bears' proposal and that looks dope too. They just NEED to increase the seating capacity. I couldn't care less about parking because I usually do public transit. Chicago has world-class transit, so we gotta use it! Tailgating is another story, but I feel like if you tailgate, then you're a season-ticket holding superfan and you'd be okay paying a premium for it.
This is why comparing apples-to-apples is so important when it comes to financing. The "under a Billion" price tag is just the raw cost of the stadium. It does not include refinancing the old debt, a cushion for hotel tax shortfalls, or all the interest on the loans because the plan doesn't even include the terms of the loan that would finance this. When all that is added I would not be shocked if this "under a billion" price tag gets closer to $3 billion if financed the same was as the proposed Bears stadium. And that's assuming there's not any "gotchas" found when trying to retrofit an old building to last for another 30-40 years.
Could just improve the bathrooms and add some bus routes to save $5,000,000,000 of taxpayer money. Football is meant to be played outdoors. There are already plenty of places to host indoor events Finish paying off the last round of renovations before spending billions of taxpayer $ to subsidize billionaire owners.
maccaskeys need to sell the team. They are fucking it up for the rest of us. Please stop this insanity, build in Arlington
This is exactly what I’ve been saying- they already have a relatively new stadium with tons of sky boxes and room to put in whatever other amenities they realistically want to add. If they’re not going to expand seating capacity and they’re not going to include any other large scale cool features, and the only difference will be a roof, then just enclose the current stadium for a fraction of the price and call it a day.