Illinois Gov Still Won’t Fund Stadium After Talk with Bears CEO

It’s still third and long for the Chicago Bears’ hopes of a $5 billion commercial development anchored by a domed stadium on the lakefront.

That’s the takeaway that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s staff offered after their boss met with the football team’s president and CEO Kevin Warren for breakfast, apparently in a continued push for $2 billion in state funding for the would-be project.

Pritzker has called the Bears’ outlook on state funding “a non-starter,” and spokesperson Alex Gough said that had not changed after the breakfast meeting with Warren, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The governor “regularly meets with business leaders, and Mr. Warren is the head of an Illinois-based business,” Gough said, calling the conversation a “cordial” introduction.

Bears spokesman Scott Hagel declined comment.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has backed the Bears’ plan but it’s gotten little traction in Springfield, where the skeptical governor and the legislature hold the purse strings the team hopes to loosen.

The state legislature ended its session earlier this year without addressing the Bears’ request.

Warren previously said the second-half of this year would be a “critically important” time for the team, which has considered other sites, including the former Arlington International Racecourse in the northern suburbs.

Warren recently joined the board of Intersect Illinois, an economic development organization that works with Pritzker’s administration to attract businesses to the state. It was not a gubernatorial appointment, and Warren said his volunteer role with the group would not “have any impact on our stadium project.”

State lawmakers could vote on a proposal from the Bears as early as November, when they return to Springfield in the wake of the presidential election.

The Bears’ most recent plan called for the team to put $2.3 billion in private financing into the deal, a total that included a $300 million from the NFL. The stadium itself is expected to cost $3.2 billion, with much of the balance of $1.8 billion paying for related commercial development.