Daily Herald opinion: Bears, Arlington Heights move a step closer to the end zone
It all started with two sentences.
“The long-term solution is not Arlington Park. That land will have a higher and better purpose for something else at some point.”
It’s been more than four years since Churchill CEO Bill Carstanjen told investors that on a July 2020 quarterly earnings call, signaling that Arlington Park’s days as a horse racing venue were numbered.
Years from now, we might look back at this past Monday night as the start of the final drive that ends with a Bears stadium in Arlington Heights.
As Chris Placek detailed in Tuesday’s Daily Herald, the village has retained a consultant to review the Bears’ economic impact study on redeveloping Arlington Park.
Monday night’s move by the village is a sign that the Bears are still very serious about Arlington Heights.
Village Manager Randy Recklaus confirmed that Bears consultants have submitted preliminary drafts of their traffic and economic impact studies to village hall.
“So we now can begin our review,” Recklaus said. “This is obviously a significant milestone in the project.”
It’s one of the biggest steps in a process that started when Churchill put the property up for sale in 2021 and that has moved very little since the Bear closed on the property in 2023.
The move comes almost a year after Bears President Kevin Warren announced that the team was moving its focus back to the lakefront with a $5 billion plan to put a stadium there.
The road since that day has been, much like the Bears on the field the past few seasons, a lot of talk with little movement. Meanwhile, the Arlington Park property sat empty.
Yes, we’re aware that all of this could be a negotiating ploy to get state leaders to the table.
Maybe Monday night’s news changes the situation in Springfield.
But right now, a lakefront stadium is starting to look more like the long shot. All the parties know the score, and it’s starting to feel like a downtown stadium is more a Hail Mary than a realistic option.
We’re still waiting to seeing real numbers on what a stadium will look like in Arlington Heights. Those numbers need to make sense. It’s a valuable property.
Warren has said he wants shovels in the ground working on a new stadium in 2025. If that’s the case, we’re in the home stretch, and Arlington Park appears to be nosing ahead in the race.
As Churchill’s Carstanjen said in 2020, the Arlington Park land will have a better purpose. Now, it’s looking more and more as though we soon will have greater clarity on what that purpose will be.