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Chicago’s dubious history of trying to keep the Bears at Soldier Field shows why the NFL franchise must leave

In October 1910, architect and city planner Daniel Burham spoke to colleagues at a conference in London. This was a year after he published 1909’s Plan of Chicago—a manifesto that would shape the city for the next century and come to be known as the Burnham Plan. But that plan hadn’t been enacted yet. Only proposed. Burnham was still selling his grand ambitions for a city reduced to smoldering ash 39 years earlier in the Great Fire, providing what became the default defense for extravagant projects to follow. 

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized,” Burnham said, according to the ​​Chicago Record-Herald. “Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.”

Uttered some 4,000 miles and an ocean away, Burnham’s words became an unofficial mantra in Chicago, trotted out every time some politician unveiled their newest agenda. It was pure and simple advertising. Better than anything Madison Avenue could come up with and almost insulting by nature: The only ones who could disagree were those who couldn’t dream big enough. 

These days, the spirit of Burnham’s words is no longer used to promote civic pride or enhance Chicago for its residents, but to rob them of the very ideals that formed the framework of his plan. The latest proposed renovation of Soldier Field to placate the Chicago Bears is the greatest example yet. It’s revolting. It should infuriate anyone who calls the city home. And whatever power Burnham’s “no little plans” speech still holds over Chicagoans should be met with Monorail-jingle skepticism.

An ambitious plan to re-think Soldier Field feels big and noble, but it is, we now know, folly. Especially when the perfect use for the lakeside arena already exists, one Burnham himself envisioned and generations of activists have fought to defend. But the Bears must leave to enact it and Chicagoans should welcome their departure. 

The city has done more than enough to spur the private franchise’s wealth with little return (certainly not many championships). The more Chicago offers to change Soldier Field, the more they insult those who will inevitably pay for it.  

To understand why striving to keep the Bears in a home they no longer want makes no sense at all, we need to dive deep into the history of the place and the team that would unexpectedly become synonymous with it.

The many lives of Soldier Field

Soldier Field in 1933 as depicted on a postcard from the Century of Progress Chicago World’s Fair

Nine years after Burnham spoke in London, the Chicago Tribune reported the development of a new stadium first outlined in his Plan of Chicago – a memorial to United States soldiers who died in combat – nestled along Lake Michigan just south of Roosevelt Road:

“Chicago is to have the largest open air gathering place in the world — a concrete and marble stadium, to seat 100,000, to cost in the neighborhood of $4,000,000, and to be built by the South park board on the made land directly south of the new Field museum, between the Illinois Central tracks and the lake.”

These were no little plans. One-hundred-thousand patrons and $4 million. Easy access to public transit. A destination that stirred men’s blood — even if there was already confusion over the details. (The National Hotel Reporter noted in 1922 the stadium was to seat 150,000 and cost $2 million.)

By the time it officially opened in October 1924, on the 53rd anniversary of the Chicago Fire, Municipal Grant Park Stadium didn’t exactly resemble the big plans taxpayers had been sold. Capacity leveled off around 74,000. Another 30,000 temporary seats could be added depending on the format, but it certainly wasn’t “the largest open air gathering place in the world”.  The 82,000-seat Wembley Stadium opened to the public in England a year earlier with a standing capacity of 125,000. The $4 million budget wasn’t correct, either: Reports suggest it was anywhere between $5 million and $13 million. 

But few could argue the place didn’t look magnificent. The Greek Revival design by architecture firm Holabird & Roche was stunning. The colonnades on the east and west sides made the place feel like an ancient coliseum teleported into the present. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987 with specific attention paid to the “decorative curtains,” as it referred to the colonnades. 

Soldier Field served just about every purpose its creators intended. Numerous college football games were held there. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish pretty much made it their second home starting in 1929. In the 1930s, a local club used it for up ski-jumping during the winter. It held the inaugural Special Olympics in 1968. Amelia Earhart, Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr. gave speeches there. And in 1971, after outgrowing Wrigley Field, their home of 50 years, the Chicago Bears signed a three-year lease with the park district to move in.

1933-34 Army-Navy Game via Century of Progress Records, 1927-1952, University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

The next 50 years provided modest on-field success (227-166-2 record, 7-8 playoffs), inferior fan experiences and countless attempts by the Bears to flee Soldier Field. Each time the city has convinced them to stay. The latest gambit, however, seems ripe to fail spectacularly. 

A big, new, nonsensical plan

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks during a news conference about the future of Soldier Field, Monday, July 25, 2022, in Chicago. Lightfoot presented three options for renovating the home of the Chicago Bears, but the NFL football team said it’s not interested. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Park District CEO Rosa Escareño gathered media at Soldier Field on July 25 to explain why the Bears should stay.

The franchise had already entered into a $197.2 million purchase agreement to buy Arlington International Racecourse last September. The 326-acre property is 30 miles from Soldier Field but significantly closer to the team’s Halas Hall headquarters in Lake Forest. The Bears would build a new stadium from scratch while ostensibly playing out their lease at Soldier Field through 2033 (or buy out their remaining lease in 2026). Monday’s announcement was the city’s latest attempt to entice the Bears to stay. 

Further modernizing Soldier Field would require an estimated $2.2 billion under the most expansive of three designs presented. The city did not lay out where that money would come from, though Lightfoot said she’s willing to commit an unspecified amount of tax dollars. The money would be spent fashioning a dome to the facility, expanding concession areas and adding nearly 9,000 seats to bump capacity up to 70,000. As it stands, the Bears boast the smallest capacity in the NFL at 61,500. The 70,000 threshold is a league requirement to host the Super Bowl. 

(AP Photo/Landmark Chicago Interests, LLC via AP) ORG XMIT: CER202

“Today I am excited about the bold, ambitious plan that will transform Soldier Field into a world-class stadium, building on the strong Chicago legacy to make no little plans.” Escareño began.

Which is now, as it was in 1910, nothing more than advertising. The city does not need the Bears to remain at Soldier Field. It does not need to allocate public funds to a stadium in an area that predominantly caters to Chicago’s wealthiest residents. It does not need to add another layer of exclusivity to a parks system that recently banned teens from accessing Grant Park and the Museum Campus after 6 p.m. from Thursdays to Sundays — a move the ACLU noted would “result in unnecessary stops and arrests and further strain relations between [police] and young people of color.” Chicagoans have little reason to trust a broken Parks Department to dutifully execute such a massive project, nor a Lightfoot administration with numerous transparency concerns. It is instead time to accept the Bears need to move on.

Soldier Field was not constructed to house a modern NFL team. It was meant to be a community space used for concerts, gatherings and activities that predated the wealth of entertainment options available post-World War II. The renovations and updates made over the last 50 years to sculpt the arena to the Bears’ needs were stop-gap solutions, for the most part. Game-day traffic is still a nightmare with limited parking an even bigger hassle. It’s a mile walk to reach the nearest entry gate from the CTA train station, though the commuter Metra line is three blocks closer. Entry points to Soldier Field bottleneck in the park and create long lines to get in. Tailgating, once a necessity because the Parks Department didn’t approve alcohol sales in the building until the mid-1980s, is now mostly spread out across the Museum Campus as football fans mix with park-goers in the area. The Bears and the NFL have simply outgrown the location. 

Soldier Field wasn’t their first choice, either. Former Bears owner George Halas thought the lakefront arena was inferior and wanted instead to use Dyche Stadium — now known as Ryan Field — on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston. He even had a three-year lease signed and ready to go in 1971 after Wrigley Field was no longer suitable. During that time the Bears would build their own stadium to call home. The Big Ten vetoed the plan. 

This is where the Chicago Parks Department stepped in and a marriage of convenience was born. Soldier Field desperately needed fixing. The city also needed a way to pay for it. The Bears could solve both issues. An initial agreement was struck on a three-year lease with an option for two more years. The Bears would pay rent “equal to 10 percent of their ticket sales and cede parking and concession revenue to the Park District” according to Liam T.A. Ford’s 2009 book Soldier Field: A Stadium and Its City. The money would go towards renovations. Halas still believed the team’s stay at Soldier Field would be short. A new stadium would be built for the Bears and the club would move on. He told season ticket-holders just as much.

As Ford wrote:

Halas knew what football fans who had attended games at Soldier Field had known since the beginning: that whatever the grandeur of the stadium, the sightlines and the distance of the seating from the field were inferior to many other football stadiums. As the city, the park district, and the Bears wrangled over the stadium, [Park District Superintendent Edmund] Kelly and those in charge of Soldier Field struggled to keep it viable. “Hell, there were times that people were walking around, they had bricks and pieces of the stadium falling on them,” Kelly said.

Temporary seats were constructed in the north end of the grounds to accommodate an NFL team. This also had the bad fortune of decreasing capacity to 57,000, still larger than Wrigley Field, but already one of the lowest marks in the NFL. Even the city seemed to realize the Bears wouldn’t stay put for long. Then-Mayor Richard J. Daley formed the Stadium Site Committee in 1971 which came up with five proposals for the Bears, including an option at Soldier Field. When the committee began moving forward with plans to tear down Soldier Field and replace it with a $55 million, 75,000 seat open-dome facility, Chicagoans fought back. 

It wasn’t in the spirit of the Burnham Plan. This wasn’t making the lake more accessible. This wasn’t helping protect Chicago’s Front Yard, as Burnham intended. 

“Soldier field aerial” by Steven Vance circa 1980s. The construction of temporary seats cut off the north end of the stadium.

Instead a compromise was reached — one of many during the Bears’ partnership with the Parks Department. Amid warnings the Bears would not renew their lease in 1980, the Parks Department agreed on a $32 million renovation. It didn’t stir men’s blood, but it provided new seats and scoreboards. Locker rooms and bathrooms were updated and repairs were made to the original structural system of the building. Ford found these upgrades came at a cost.

Architectural details mandated in the original Soldier Field design competition were removed, such as the metal rings affixed atop the wall separating the grandstands from the field to hang bunting, as required in 1919. The rings, Ford noted, “represented the idea of the stadium as a place to bring together the whole city for celebratory events, the climax of parades and patriots pageants — a function that had almost entirely disappeared by the end of the 1970s.”

The wall was torn down to make way for new box seats. The Bears found the upgrades acceptable and signed a 20-year lease. The deal required the Bears to provide the city with 12 percent of ticket revenues, 20 percent of luxury suite rentals and all revenue from concessions, advertising and parking. 

Instead of straying from the Burnham Plan with a fell swoop and a new stadium along the lake, the Parks Department ate away at the soul of his intentions little by little until the building was a literal shell of itself. 

Lessons from the 'mistake by the lake' renovation

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley looks down at a model of Soldier Field following a news conference at the stadium Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2000, where plans to rehabilitate the structure as well as plans for the revitalization of the park surrounding the stadium were announced. The plan, to be presented to the state Legislature, calls for the approval of $587 million for the project. The Bears and the National Football League would contribute $200 million, and as much as $400 million dollars would come from bonds. (AP Photo/Charles Bennett)

As the 20-year lease came to a close, and while the nation was gripped by the Florida recount in the 2000 presidential election, the Bears and the city of Chicago rushed a plan through the state legislature in just two weeks. A proposed $587 million renovation would gut the interior of Soldier Field, demolish the Park District headquarters in the north end and rebuild the stadium inside the colonnades. The Chicago Park District approved via 5-0 vote without discussion. The Bears and the NFL were only expected to contribute $200 million with $387 million by way of 30-year bonds from the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. A two percent Chicago hotel tax would pay off the debt. Numerous advocate groups fought back, bringing lawsuit after lawsuit, but the legislation passing through the Illinois statehouse kept the courts from halting the project. Because the colonnades remained in place, the city successfully argued it was merely a renovation of the property and not a new construction. After threatening to leave Soldier Field 13 times since 1990, the Bears were about to enter a franchise-altering, 30-year lease that changed everything about its relationship with the Parks Department. 

In 2000, the Bears paid $9.5 million under the terms of the 1980 lease for total control of the stadium for 20 days annually. Under the new deal the Bears would instead pay a $10 million flat rate annually for 116 days of control. Even as the renovation further cut stadium capacity to 61,500, the Bears came out far ahead in the deal. The team began introducing Personal Seat Licenses, with prices ranging from $900 to $10,000 (the highest in the NFL at the time). According to a 2004 University of Chicago case study by economist Allen R. Sanderson, “The Bears’ own revenue estimates for 2003 reveal an expected gain in profitability from $11 million to $30 million with the renovated facility, more favorable lease arrangements, and more revenue sources.” 

Sanderson estimated the deal helped the Bears increase their potential franchise value between $300 and $400 million or double its “pre-deal” price. Public pressure in the wake of 9/11 kept the team from selling naming rights to Soldier Field, however, eliminating a potential source for a cash windfall.  

Chicagoans are still footing the bill for the 2003 renovations to Soldier Field through the hotel tax and will continue to do so until 2032. The same economically dubious logic — that tourists will pay for the construction since it is funded through a hotel tax — is still being used, most recently in the Tennessee Titans’ quest for a new home. However, studies have shown “little evidence exists supporting links between sporting events and hotel demand”.

Besides, it turned out the hotel tax wouldn’t be sufficient. The revised Soldier Field’s $587 million price tag ballooned to $632 million by the end of the project, $432 million of which taxpayers would have to cover. When hotel tax revenues fell short by $29 million in 2021, Chicagoans were stuck paying the difference. Worse, park-goers have continued to see their public spaces along the lakefront decline – a clear departure from the Burnham Plan.

Per Sanderson:

When the mayor first announced the renovation plan in November 2000, as a sop to certain civic opponents he promised 19 acres of new parkland around the new stadium. Without explanation, public press releases from the city and Bears suddenly began using the figure of 17 acres, not 19. That public space includes a Veterans sculpture and water wall, children’s garden, Memorial lawn, winter gardens, and a sledding hill. But later, upon close examination of the architectural drawings, that figure included – and counted as “parkland” – landscaped median strips along the access and interior roads and sloped berms alongside the parking garage. The usable area turned out to be about 10 acres, not 19. 

Ironically, Sanderson found in 1988 that Dirk Lohan, one of the key architects of the renovation, lobbied the mayor’s office to convert Soldier Field back to a civic site for public use. This was a popular sentiment before the 2003 renovation was completed, too. 

Construction progresses on Soldier Field as seen from this aerial view Monday, March 31, 2002 (AP Photo/Brian Kersey)

The Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois and advocate group Friends of the Parks proposed an 80,000-seat stadium with a retractable dome on public land north of the Chicago White Sox ballpark on the South Side. The benefits were numerous. The Bears could continue to play at Soldier Field while their new home was built, rather than playing the 2002 season at the University of Illinois’s Memorial Stadium two-and-a-half hours away. The work would be completed in less time than it would take to renovate Soldier Field. It would also be cheaper by nearly $200 million. Public transit options were already in close proximity and functioned well for Sox games. Crucially, once the Bears moved in, the plan called to revert Soldier Field to its original 1924 scale. The current seating arrangement would be dismantled and more fields would be added. It would once again be a public space in the way Burnham envisioned.

The Bears refused to consider it.

“With the exception of Grant Park itself, Soldier Field occupies the most valuable public property in Chicago, which the Bears are able to occupy at close to a zero price.” Sanderson explained. “In addition, they don’t have to pay for the congestion externalities.”

So the 2003 renovation plowed ahead with massive public and media backlash. The resulting arena was roundly mocked by architects, football fans and experts alike. Blair Kamin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic then at the Chicago Tribune dubbed the project “the mistake by the lake” — noting that politics had triumphed over civic vision. Soldier Field quickly lost its National Landmark Status in the process.

Now, nearly a century after Soldier Field opened, the city of Chicago wants to keep molding it. This latest rehab project is, indeed, no little plan. Lightfoot incorrectly stated the price tag would be less than the cost to the team of building a new stadium from scratch. Apart from the fact original estimates for these projects tend to end up way off, $2.2 billion is higher than the cost of Allegiant Stadium ($1.9B), MetLife Stadium ($1.6B), Mercedes Benz Stadium ($1.5B), Levi’s Stadium ($1.3B), AT&T Stadium ($1.3B) and US Bank Stadium ($1.1B)—each was built on new land from scratch. 

Forbes valued the Chicago Bears at $4.075 billion in 2021 — the seventh-highest total in the NFL. If the team wants to build a stadium in a suburb, it has the means to do so without relying on public funds. Especially as study after study after study has shown that the promises made to taxpayers when committing to private stadiums rarely, if ever, are kept. The evidence is as overwhelming as the wealth the city of Chicago inadvertently helped the Bears create with its last 30-year lease. 

Lightfoot said the city is already talking to potential new tenants if the Bears still want to leave. She suggested another NFL team may look to move in, though again, no specifics were offered.

If the city wants to avoid little plans, if Lightfoot wants to stir men’s blood, she would welcome the team’s exit from Soldier Field and restore the building for its original purpose: A public space for all to use and a gem along a sterling lakefront. 

Instead the city continues to find cover in Burnham’s words. It tells the public these projects will lift the city to new heights, even as it continues to warp a building central to Burnham’s plan and move farther and farther away from his original intention. 

Chicagoans deserve better. The Bears will be just fine. 

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