https://archive.ph/odjGM


So he did some light terrorism. Who hasn't.

I dunno. Gotta do something with that land, and I don't sense any burning desire to subsidize another new stadium for the White Sox. Get the land out from under Saddam Hussein's co-conspirator, unload Arlington Park, and maybe the Bears can build a stadium within their means, even if it can't attract the mythical Final Fours that every new stadium says it's going to get.

I didn't realize this guy was involved, too?

The new stadium, which would hold 60,000 to 70,000 fans for football, is a dull structure by any architectural standard. Sitting within yards of the Lake Michigan shore, the stadium would offer no acknowledgement of this prime locale. Its primary nod to Chicago would be an enormous window at its north end placed to frame the downtown skyline. Little else would acknowledge the building’s place in the world, much less this city. If a view of the Loop is the most important thing to the Bears and NFL, that could be done elsewhere in the city, without using public lakefront land.

I will give them this: The Chicago Bears are thinking big.

But they’re playing with the house’s money.

And we are the house.

Let’s be clear about what’s driving what. A private corporation is looking to mold a large portion of Chicago’s precious lakefront into an entertainment district that supports its private operations. Sure, there might be a public-private component to some of the new facilities, but Chicago has historically kept private ventures off the public lands of the lakefront.

The Bears occupancy of Soldier Field should remain the anomaly, not the norm. A facility tailor-made for fewer than a dozen days a year should not be driving the development of land dedicated to public use. The Bears’ suggestions of further development demonstrate a vision of public land as a commercial zone similar to Navy Pier. These are exactly the types of development that Montgomery Ward, Burnham and generations of Chicago’s civic visionaries have worked to keep off our beloved lakefront.

This new stadium and its associated facilities have no place on Chicago’s lakefront. Any number of large planned developments across the city could absorb this beast within their footprints: The 78, Lincoln Yards, Bronzeville Lakefront (the old Michael Reese site) or the McCormick Place truck marshalling site.

It’s time to stop the Bears’ ill-conceived plans and send them back to the locker room.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

It sounds like you were here last weekend.

Oh no, are we running out of lakefront in Chicago? Last time I was there it seemed like there were miles of it.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Well, this is one way to see the world.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

And that's fine. And no, most Great Lakes cities don't have heavy development on their waterfronts. Milwaukee's is similar to ours. The St. Louis riverfront outside of the Arch is desolate. Toronto does, but Toronto has never seen a patch of land it couldn't put a shitty glass-and-steel highrise on.

I truly don't get the vision here. I get it for an apartment complex but these are all year round use venues that would get a lot more use than a place where maybe you'll have some people sitting on benches after a walk. Maybe we just get rid of the whole skyline and turn all of Chicago into a green space.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Well, that's just it. Once you open the door to putting a Rosemont on the lake for the enrichment of the Bears, why stop there? Why not build the apartment complex? Why does Northerly Island need to be a nature preserve when it's all just landfill anyway? Think of how cool a seafood restaurant there would be.

St. Louis doesn't count. It's a river town. Who wants to look out at a river?

I said big cities and not Milwaukee.

Still though, the point isn't really to compare ourselves to Milwaukee and Holland. It's that Chicago has a massive amount of lakefront and somehow this small portion of land is sacred and not only shouldn't have a stadium on it but it also shouldn't have a year round entertainment district and instead should have, I don't know, grass and probably a few benches, even though there is exactly that within a 10 minute walk that is big enough to handle tens of thousands of people.

I truly don't get the vision here. I get it for an apartment complex but these are all year round use venues that would get a lot more use than a place where maybe you'll have some people sitting on benches after a walk. Maybe we just get rid of the whole skyline and turn all of Chicago into a green space.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Just like the Lucas Museum of How Cool George Lucas Is, just build somewhere else.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

I don't believe Chicagoans are going unentertained without letting the Bears develop the lakefront to their whims.

I would expect Soldier Field to continue to exist in some scaled-down form after the Bears leave, probably for high school football, soccer, and concerts (kind of taking the place of Northerly Island, which seems barely tolerated by the park district and by people who have to get in and out of it). If they want to convert it to "grass with some benches for people to sit," that would be fine, too. It's a hideous building.

The Bears are not going anywhere. No level of state or city government wants to chip in for their vanity project and without public assistance the McCaskeys are either unqualified to borrow the money or unable/unwilling to afford the interest. If history is any indication we are within a quarter or two of a pronounced economic downturn, which just sinks their chances further.

Oh good. High school sports there. Perfect plan.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Well, at least we know that grass can grow there.

Hate to tell ya this "Amigo", but that is sort of the essence of how life works.

My prediction is that this drags out another 2-3 years in increasingly embarrassing fashion for the McCaskeys. They try to seize on Virginia’s death as a public relations sympathy boon, but it backfires and they get left basically at the mercy of two options: 1) Sell the team, admit defeat or 2) come to some sweetheart terms with the Park District where Soldier Field gets a midlife refresh on the Park District’s dime (some federal stimulus funds from the coming recession probably get thrown in) while the Bears play there basically for free while taking home more revenue. The city buries more of their parking lots and they get to commodify the tailgate experience much more.

But no dome, no Super Bowl, no football Disneyland. What the Bears do get is the monkey off their back and a place at the table when Chicago is hopefully experiencing a turnabout in its fortunes through the 2030’s.

Hate to tell ya this "Amigo", but that is sort of the essence of how life works.

I like that even as part of a marketing stunt, they can’t figure out how to situate the outfield to maximize the skyline view.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

But no dome, no Super Bowl, no football Disneyland.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

They'd have everyone staring into the sun if they did.

The Sox have a fine view of the skyline from their little instagram staging area.

No one goes to a baseball game to stare at a skyline for nine innings. it's fine.

Hate to tell ya this "Amigo", but that is sort of the essence of how life works.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

I despise the Super Bowl pitch, by the way. I truly believe that when the weather is nice, Chicago is the greatest city in the world. When it's not nice, it's probably like top 60 at best. Of course, the Super Bowl is comfortably situated in the most dismal time for the city. Nobody wants to be here in February. I certainly don't. We have a thread about surviving it and everything. Neither does anyone who has to come here for the game; they'd rather be in Miami or New Orleans or Las Vegas--even Inglewood doesn't really get the blood flowing.

The track record for repeat appearances on these new stadiums is not great. So it'd be precisely one Super Bowl. I don't think a Packers-Jaguars game or whatever would rank high on the list of great moments in Chicago sports history.

I am not a legal expert, how many times do I have to say it?