Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker ripped into Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for lacking any sort of plan to keep the Bears in the city, despite the mayor’s claims that he wants them to remain in the Windy City. Pritzker’s criticisms came after Johnson told Crain’s Chicago Business that he envisioned the city taking over the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority as part of a plan to keep the Bears from leaving town.
The comments, along with Johnson’s criticisms of financing plans to move the Bears from Chicago to Arlington Heights, led Pritzker to make his own statement during a recent press event. “What might happen with the Bears? I would say I know the mayor has no plan,” the governor said. “He has come up with no plan at all about how the Bears would end up in the city of Chicago.”
“That’s problematic. I would love for them to be in the city, but we are three years in now and he still has no plan,” Pritzker added. He then took things a step further by saying that Johnson made a “bunch of demands” during the May legislative session that he should have made much sooner. “This is kind of typical,” the governor said.
“The mayor has shown up every spring, at the end of session, to pronounce what he would like to happen,” he went on to say, according to NBC Chicago. “We’ve seen almost nothing out of the mayoral administration. To show up in May and have a bunch of demands seems late in the game, and it’s unfortunate that’s happened most years.”
Over the course of the last several months, Johnson has continued to express his belief that the Bears should stay in the Windy City, pointing out proposals made by his administration in 2024 that would provide the team with a new stadium located south of the existing Soldier Field. Of course, taxpayers would be picking up a huge portion of the bill, something to the tune of $1.5 billion, out of the total projected cost of $4.7 billion.
“We put forth a plan a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, Springfield did not care to look at that plan,” he stated in a May interview with NBC and Telemundo Chicago. “Right now, there is no other plan that any other city has for the Bears outside of the city of Chicago. No other location has a plan. They have never presented one.”
Johnson has also been heavily critical of the Bears organization for ruling out Chicago. “We had an entire press conference, with a proposal on the lakefront two years ago,” he said. “How do you have an entire proposal with the Bears, with the city of Chicago, with labor, with the notion that somehow the greatest, the most fruitful, economic viable prime real estate anywhere in the state, anywhere in the region is somehow not suited for world affairs?”
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In fall 2025, Kevin Warren, Bears CEO and president, stated the team was not able to reach a deal with the city of Chicago to build a new stadium on the lakefront. He also ruled out building one on the Reese Hospital site. “(Arlington Heights) is the only location in Cook County that works,” he went on to say at the time.
“I mean we had discussions for over a year with individuals from the city of Chicago about the Museum Campus… we couldn’t resolve the open issues. The Michael Reese site doesn’t work, it’s too small. So, Arlington Heights is our main focus,” Warren added. “Moving outside of the city of Chicago is not a decision we reached easily. This project does not represent us leaving, it represents us expanding.”
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video