Arlington Heights set to OK a pre-development agreement with the Chicago Bears tonight

Arlington Heights trustees are set to approve a framework Monday night to guide further negotiations with the Chicago Bears as the team inches toward building a stadium and accompanying mixed-used development in Arlington Heights.

Village leadership has emphasized the still-tentative nature of the discussions and the fact that the pre-development agreement is non-binding. However, the document, which lays out general terms for how Arlington Heights and the Bears could work together on a possible development, is the first public acknowledgement of the fact that the Bears plan to ask for public money to execute their proposal.

It also lays out a set of public financing options the village could use, including “tax increment financing; special service areas [and] special assessments,” among others, and the terms on which the village would accept or not accept the team’s proposal.

According to the agreement, whether the village opts to proceed with the project comes down to one question: “only to the extent justified by economic and fiscal analyses conducted by the Village and/or competent consultants regarding the Project.”

Its purpose, according to a memo by village staff that accompanies the document, is “to provide the [Bears] some assurances regarding our intentions and predictability of process so that they can make a purchasing decision later in 2022.″

The Bears first inked a $197.2 million purchase agreement for the now-shuttered Arlington Park International Racecourse in September 2021. Since then, speculation has swirled around whether Arlington Heights will offer the team public money to help build any part of their $5 billion proposed development, what the impact will be on school districts, how an NFL stadium might affect traffic and how it could change the village’s economy.

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Trustees first offered public feedback on the pre-development agreement and proposed plans for the 326-acre site at an Oct. 10 Committee of the Whole meeting.

The reception to the plans, which feature a placeholder stadium alongside about 200 acres of parks, restaurants, residential areas of varying densities and retail, was decidedly mixed at that meeting.

Trustee Jim Tinaglia said he was one of the most enthusiastic advocates for the team’s relocation plans but said he could not support the plans the team presented.

Tinaglia feared the mixed-use, transit-oriented development would detract from Arlington Heights’ current downtown. Further, he said, the plans didn’t emphasize the stadium and related development enough.

“I want to see what the stadium is going to look like,” he said. “I want to see why it’s so special and why we should have it here.”

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Arlington Heights Mayor Thomas Hayes disagreed with Tinaglia, saying the trustees were there to think about “all 326 acres” of the site, but Trustee John Scaletta shared Tinaglia’s reservations about how the new development might impact the village’s downtown, saying “what we don’t want to do is create downtown part two.”

The team’s plans to build in the suburbs have sparked some organizing against the use of public money to fund the redevelopment. The Illinois chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers-backed libertarian political advocacy group, attempted to introduce an ordinance via a petition process allowed under village code that would bar Arlington Heights from giving public subsidies to any business looking to open in the area. The village board rejected the ordinance in September, leaving Americans for Prosperity the option of gathering enough signatures to represent 12% of the village’s registered voters to put the question out to referendum.

Residents of Arlington Heights have had varying levels of enthusiasm about the idea of the Bears relocating to the village – from all-in to skeptical.

They’ve expressed concerns about traffic and congestion around the stadium, whether the Bears will sponsor July 4th fireworks like the racetrack’s old owners did, about whether their property taxes will increase and whether or not the move out to the village is already a done deal.

Village leadership has responded to that wondering with consistent statements that the discussion around the future of the racetrack is still very preliminary.

“The village has quite a bit of say in terms of what will go there ultimately, and how it will be built and how it will impact our community,” Hayes told residents at a recent village board meeting. “And so we’ve got a long way to go.”