The Chicago Bears have narrowed their stadium search to a single state. At a news conference in Lake Forest on Thursday, Bears chairman George McCaskey and president and CEO Kevin Warren declared that Hammond, Indiana, is now the franchise's "sole focus" for a new domed stadium, ending any practical ambiguity about where the team is headed.
Warren confirmed the Bears have completed due diligence on the Lost Marsh site in Hammond and are currently conducting due diligence on a second Hammond location, the Wolf Lake Terminal. "While we were working on the Lost Marsh site, we discovered a potentially new site that could even be as good or better than the Lost Marsh site," Warren said. "So we're in the middle of that due diligence."
The two sites are not competing options as far as Warren is concerned. He said the team is looking into bringing both together "from a mixed-use standpoint" rather than choosing one over the other. The Bears have not announced a timeline for selecting a site or breaking ground.
The Illinois door closed in late May when the state legislature failed to pass a PILOT bill—a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes measure the Bears said was essential to deliver property tax certainty for a stadium project. Days after that vote failed, the franchise's board of directors voted formally to "advance our stadium development project in Hammond." That board vote was the clearest signal yet that Illinois had run out of road.
McCaskey said the team believed it had made a strong case for an Arlington Heights stadium. "We felt we had presented a pretty compelling case that a stadium in Arlington would be beneficial not only for the Village of Arlington Heights but for the community and for the entire state really," McCaskey said. "Tremendous driver of economic activity. Job creation. Tax revenue. Sales revenue. Ultimately, that argument was unsuccessful."
The Bears have owned a 326-acre property in Arlington Heights, Illinois, since 2021. They purchased the former Arlington Park racetrack site specifically with stadium development in mind. That property now sits without a clear purpose tied to the franchise's future.
Warren did not cut Illinois off entirely at the podium. He described discussions with state lawmakers as "occasional" and said the team's two core requirements—property tax certainty and infrastructure certainty—have not changed. McCaskey characterized the dialogue with in-state officials as "minimal." Together, those descriptions leave Illinois with no realistic opening under the current posture.
"We've been very clear the last couple years the things that we've always needed is property tax certainty, we need infrastructure certainty, that's what we've needed," Warren said. "So that has not changed. There's some other things associated with it, but I don't know why Illinois lawmakers, as far as what you said, have hit a snag."
Warren pointed to the board's vote as the factor that focused the organization's energy. "One of the good things about what we've had is since we did have the board decision, we have really focused on Indiana," he said. "That's where our time and energy and effort have been spent, and we've had extremely productive meetings there and feel really good about what's going on with the state of Indiana, specifically Hammond."
The Bears first publicly floated Indiana as a possibility in December, when Warren released an open letter to the franchise's fanbase days before a Week 16 game against the Green Bay Packers. That letter opened a door. The Illinois legislature's failure in May closed the other one.
The team has played home games at Soldier Field since 1971. Two playoff games this past January drew a raucous crowd at the lakefront stadium, but the Bears have made clear that Soldier Field is not a long-term answer—a lease arrangement, not a destination. The push for a domed, mixed-use facility is about putting the franchise on the financial footing its NFL peers in newer buildings enjoy.
The Wolf Lake Terminal site adds a new dimension to the Hammond plan. The team is not simply swapping one Indiana location for another but is now evaluating whether both parcels can be developed together as a single project. That process is active and unresolved, which means the Bears are not yet at a point where they can announce a specific site, a financing structure, or a construction timeline.
For Illinois, the arithmetic is bleak. The PILOT bill failed. Talks are minimal. The Bears' board has voted. McCaskey said the Arlington Heights argument was ultimately unsuccessful. None of that language leaves a realistic path for Illinois to recapture the franchise without producing the property tax and infrastructure certainty the Bears have demanded for years and never received.
