Column: Brownfield site may doom Waukegan’s push for Bears stadium

So, Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor wants to lure the Chicago Bears to the city by offering a toxic site for a new stadium. Can you say, “Dead on arrival.”

One can imagine the guffaws emanating from Halas Hall, a short trip south in Lake Forest, when news reached them that a 300-acre, one-time asbestos wasteland is the chief spot where officials in the City of Progress want to host the Bears’ $5 billion domed football arena.

With straight faces, team officials have said they have to follow up every proposal they receive as they seek an alternative to the Chicago Park District’s Soldier Field, the smallest venue in the National Football League.

But doubtful in Waukegan, which sees its possible location as no laughing matter, while the team weighs and negotiates and wrangles offers from a growing throng of locations. Those communities want to be at the goal line if the historic and soon-to-be-razed former Arlington International Racecourse in Arlington Heights falters as the Bears’ chief stadium pick.

Soldier Field remains in the pack, while west suburban Naperville and Waukegan, where the mayor wrote to team officials inviting them to take a hard look at the city’s possibilities, have joined the field. Other candidates may emerge.

No one doubts the stadium assessment of Kevin Considine, president and CEO of Lake County Partners, the Lincolnshire-based economic development agency: “It would be a massive investment, which has a big ripple through the entire economy.” He told that to Steven Sadin in a front-page News-Sun story last week which disclosed Waukegan’s stadium offering site.

“It could be transformative for the neighborhood it lands in,” Considine added.

Including Arlington Heights, where the Bears paid close to $200 million for the beloved horse-racing track. The team could easily turn it around into something less ambitious than a football stadium and entertainment destination. Buildings abutting the racecourse currently are being torn down in preparation for repurposing.

But do the Bears want to kickoff a new chapter in the historic franchise by erecting a shiny new stadium on the former Johns Manville asbestos factory and dump along Waukegan’s North Side lakefront? Especially a shoreline location with a view of festering ash ponds at the former ComEd coal-fired generating plant a football field away from the potential stadium location.

That site, which includes the generating station, is on track to become another Superfund designation in Waukegan once its future is determined by environmental agencies. Those decisions will take longer than building a new Bears stadium.

Waukegan has two other locations near the city beach which can total 90 acres, Sadin reported in the June 22 News-Sun. Those sites also have environmental concerns.

The mayor and city officials get kudos for attempting to market the Manville property, and bringing it back to the forefront. It has sat fallow for decades with little discussion for its future since the huge factory complex was leveled, and leftover asbestos capped or removed.

Infrastructure improvements alone make the Manville property, north of Greenwood Avenue near the termination of the Amstutz Expressway, a challenge for any development. Plus the old Elgin, Joliet and Eastern Railway spur line, now owned by the Canadian National Railway, continues to vex planning attempts as it dead-ends at the generating plant, where strings of train cars for decades delivered Wyoming-mined coal.

The Manville site has become a white elephant and, with its history, may be a hard parcel to market for development intent. That is unless the Bears make a run at the site, which does have pleasant views of Lake Michigan and its coastline, which heads north toward Illinois Beach State Park.

If the Bears decline, what does become of one of the foremost reminder of Waukegan’s industrial legacy? It’s in a somewhat deserted location.

It would take more costly environmental mitigation, if at all, to turn it into usable open space. As Bridge Industrial’s plan for turning the old Baxter International property in Deerfield into a logistics center is stymied, the Chicago-based company may want to turn to that location.

Turning the site into a warehouse hub, once again, would mean millions of dollars in infrastructure work would be needed to upgrade surrounding highways to trucking needs. It would require an influx of state and federal funding to do that. Along with approval from residents who, like those near the Baxter property, may not want semis rumbling through their neighborhoods.

It’s a hard task, but possible to eventually use the Manville property for something. Good luck to Waukegan officials to find what that is.

Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.

sellenews@gmail.com.

Twitter: @sellenews