With Bears, Chicago hasn’t secured fair deal for taxpayers

Mayor Brandon Johnson is playing fantasy football with our money, and it’s time for him to face our reality. 

Fawning over Bears President Kevin Warren at last week’s absurd news conference did nothing to shore up our waning confidence in Johnson’s stewardship. Instead of glib talk about “no new taxes” and “public benefits,” I’d have preferred to see him graciously thank the Bears, then promise to dig deeper into the deal and seek meaningful public input to ensure taxpayers’ best interests are being served. Instead, the mayor left that job to civic groups and the media.

Indeed, it didn’t take long for the Tribune to blow a football field-sized hole in the mayor’s promise, telling us that the true cost to the public of a new Bears stadium would be billions of dollars more over time. Technically, this is not a “new tax”; the long-term financing costs would require significant additional public revenue, money that otherwise could be redirected to some of the city’s most pressing needs. This, on top of an avalanche of details omitted from last week’s dog-and-pony show, points to hidden costs for taxpayers and how badly Johnson was played by the Bears.

Green space for high school team championships, “additional green and open space with access to the lakefront for families and fans on the Museum Campus,” as WBEZ reported, and other amenities Johnson characterized as the “public benefit” he wrested from the Bears? They’re not included even in a phony $4.7 billion budget. So, if we want those amenities, we’ll be adding it to the billions taxpayers would fund.

The projected new revenue from hosting a Super Bowl, major concerts and extended artist “residencies” that Warren promised to help fill city coffers? Only Gov. J.B. Pritzker is telling the truth, saying “(The Bears are) asking to keep all of the revenue from other events that might take place at this stadium. You know, if there’s a Beyoncé concert, they want all of that revenue too, and everything else that might happen there.” When flatly asked by Crain’s whether the Park District could potentially receive less revenue from the new stadium than it currently does at Soldier Field, Karen Murphy, Bears vice president of stadium development, said it’s “too early” to determine.

It’s hard to understand how Johnson could allow the Bears to scoop up the lion’s share of stadium revenue, given his insistence that this will be a “publicly owned” stadium leased to the Bears for private use. That’s because it’ll be publicly owned in name only. This wordplay is too clever by half, aimed at skirting the Lakefront Protection Ordinance’s prohibition on privately owned developments on the lakefront. Friends of the Parks likely won’t stand for this thinly veiled trick, and neither should we.