CHICAGO — After Illinois lawmakers failed to pass legislation to help the Chicago Bears move to Arlington Heights, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson welcomed a new proposal as an opening to reconsider Chicago as the site for a new Bears stadium.

Johnson voiced tentative support for efforts that would allow municipalities in Cook County with populations of more than 70,000, including Chicago and Arlington Heights, to create a stadium authority that would let the Bears pay to build the stadium, but make it publicly owned so it would avoid paying property taxes.

“I appreciate the bill’s proponents and their acknowledgment of the value of public stadium ownership and their desire to create a pathway for a new Chicago stadium,” Johnson said. “While questions remained about the legislation’s design, legislators ultimately reached the same conclusion the City reached in 2024: the strongest proposal for a new stadium centers public ownership, the use of a sports authority and a commitment to public infrastructure.”

The proposal Johnson referred to was introduced in the waning hours of the spring legislative session, which technically ended Sunday night. Its introduction came after lawmakers’ failure to pass a proposal to let sponsors of “megaprojects” such as the Bears to negotiate long-term property tax breaks with local taxing bodies. The Senate approved the measure around 4 a.m. Tuesday, but the House declined to act on it, with members saying it was too rushed.

In 2024, Johnson and the Bears proposed replacing the team’s current home at Soldier Field with a new stadium that would have cost at least $1 billion in public borrowing plus $1.5 billion for infrastructure. The plan went nowhere after Gov. JB Pritzker said he would not have taxpayers pay to help build a stadium for a multibillion-dollar team.

This spring, Johnson had again lobbied to reconsider a city location, but Pritzker said the mayor had “no plan” to do so. Lawmakers said Johnson’s intervention was a factor in holding up the megaprojects legislation. Johnson suggested the outcome vindicated his approach.

“Chicago’s 2024 plan relied on the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority and its existing 2% hotel tax to fund public infrastructure, a model that reflects the same principles the legislature ultimately centered in its framework,” the mayor said.

The hotel tax is used to pay for the 2003 renovation of Soldier Field, but has not been enough in recent years, forcing the city to pay millions of dollars more. Soldier Field doesn’t pay property taxes because it is publicly owned.

In Arlington Heights, Mayor Jim Tinaglia said officials were “truly disappointed” at the failure to pass any Bears legislation “yet again.”

“While this outcome is not what many had hoped for, the Arlington Park property remains one of the largest and most important redevelopment opportunities with long-term potential for our community, the region, and the entire State of Illinois,” Tinaglia said in a statement.

“Although we recognize that these discussions are complex and involve many stakeholders, this is clearly a fumble for the State of Illinois,” he said. “My commitment to the residents and businesses of Arlington Heights is unwavering, and we will continue to represent the interests of our community as future opportunities and next steps are considered.”

The mayor said the village remains committed to thoughtful planning, community engagement and discussions of the Bears project.

Fans hoping the Bears would move there were crestfallen Monday after state lawmakers failed to act.

“We failed to put anything on the table,” said Ernest Rose, member of the steering committee of Touchdown Arlington, the fan club hoping to bring the team to Arlington Heights. “This crisis was created in Springfield.”

“The idea that we couldn’t get it done because we ran out of time is a failure of House leadership,” Rose said. “Now it becomes a question of whether the Bears are willing to move to Indiana, because we’ve given them nothing. If it’s a bluff, we’ve called it.”

The Bears first proposed buying the former Arlington International Racecourse in June 2021, almost five years ago, and proposed building an enclosed stadium there after they bought the site in 2023. But legislative leaders said it wasn’t a priority — until Indiana lawmakers this year quickly put together a deal to build a stadium in Hammond.

The team issued a statement Monday that it will “finalize our evaluation of both Arlington Heights and Hammond, and remain on the late spring/early summer timeline that we have previously communicated.”

Inaction by Illinois lawmakers puts Indiana in the driver’s seat, said Indiana state Rep. Earl Harris Jr.

“That puts Indiana in a great place,” he said. “The Illinois legislature did not get a bill passed, which means we are the only ones who have a real offer on the table.”

With the Bears pleading to put $2 billion into the Hammond project, Harris remained confident Indiana would be able to pay for the remaining proposed $1 billion in estimated expenses through a proposed 1% sales and beverage tax in Lake and Porter counties, 5% hotel tax in Lake County, a sports development area and a 12% admissions tax — similar to financing for Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

“Indiana does this very well,” he said. “We have a history.”

Rose said it shouldn’t have been a surprise that House Democrats from Chicago opposed giving the team special breaks without getting something in return. He hopes that leaders like House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch and Senate President Don Harmon can put together a framework over the summer to make the Bears confident that legislation will pass in the fall session.

“But,” Rose said, “it’s not looking promising.”

SPRINGFIELD — Faced with the collapse of a yearslong tax relief plan aimed at encouraging a Chicago Bears move to Arlington Heights, state lawmakers spent Sunday, the last scheduled day of their spring session, scrambling for a Hail Mary plan that could get the votes to coerce the team to stay in Illinois.

For all of the Sundays that the Bears, one of the National Football League’s charter franchises, have competed in their 105 years — from Decatur’s Staley Field, then to Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Soldier Field — it was an off-season Sunday, far away from the gridiron, that could prove to be one of the most consequential in team history.

In the wings stood an offer from the state of Indiana, which late last year created an agency to construct a taxpayer-financed stadium and surrounding mixed-use entertainment district for the Bears in Hammond, near Wolf Lake, 20 miles southeast of Chicago.

Some of the dysfunction that plagued other legislation in this spring session also was on display with the Bears issue.

Rather than meeting together during the spring session, the Illinois House and Senate often convened on alternating weeks. The schedule effectively put each chamber into separate silos, leaving them unaware of what the other was doing and creating an atmosphere that made it hard to build momentum to move bills from one chamber to the other.

State Rep. Kam Buckner of Chicago led the House in passing a measure aimed at providing the Bears with the property tax certainty they sought for the 326-acre Arlington Heights location the team acquired for $197.2 million in 2023. Buckner’s bill would have allowed the team to have its property tax assessments frozen for 25 to 45 years in exchange for making payments to local taxing bodies in lieu of taxes, known as PILOT.

But weeks after the House sent the Senate the bill, state Sen. Bill Cunningham said Saturday evening that the PILOT proposal lacked enough votes for passage — a conclusion he reached after a lengthy closed-door meeting with majority Senate Democrats.

Cunningham, who has been spearheading Bears stadium talks in the Senate, said some senators opposed giving property-tax breaks to a professional sports franchise worth billions of dollars. He also said Chicago Democrats, opposed to allowing the team to move to a suburban location, wanted a city stadium site to be an option.

“I think there’s always been, from day one, there has always been a Chicago problem with the Bears proposal,” Cunningham said. “The Bears have had a proposal on the table for a couple of years that asks Chicago members of the legislature to vote for a tax credit that would encourage a business to leave Chicago. Legislators generally don’t do that. That’s always been an obstacle to passing this bill. That’s something we’re working on addressing with our proposal.”

Lawmakers, Cunningham said, “want to be comfortable with something that protects the taxpayers, something that their constituents can live with, whether or not the Bears are supportive of it, (which) is very much a secondary concern.”

Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and the Bears had said publicly that the team’s choices to relocate from Soldier Field, its home since 1971, came down to the Arlington Heights property, the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse, and the site in Hammond.

Also upending the focus on Arlington Heights was Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s early May visit to Springfield, where he touted resurrecting a $4.7 billion lakefront stadium proposal south of Soldier Field from 2024 that Pritzker and top lawmakers rejected out of hand as too costly to taxpayers.

Cunningham contended on Saturday night that despite the team’s public pronouncements, “the Bears have met repeatedly with the city of Chicago over the last several months to talk about” a city stadium proposal.

“Obviously, the city has made it clear they would like to be considered for a new stadium,” he said on Saturday night. “We’d like to come up with some sort of proposal that would put them on an equal plane” as Arlington Heights.

By early Sunday evening, Cunningham said talks revolved around an alternative plan that would allow municipalities to create their own stadium finance authorities, establishing a public-private partnership in which the Bears would build a stadium on public land to avoid paying property taxes on the facility.

“We’re working on a public ownership model for the stadium. So it would be owned by a public municipality,” Cunningham said. “(But) privately financed. The Bears have said they’ll spend upwards of $2.5 billion of their money on (the) stadium. So the setup would be, they would essentially pay for the stadium, enter (into) an agreement with the municipality. Could be any municipality.”

Cunningham noted that Soldier Field is owned by the Chicago Park District and sits on publicly owned land, so it doesn’t pay property taxes.

“I think all but three NFL stadiums are publicly owned right now, so it’s a pretty common model,” he said.

While a municipal stadium owned by Arlington Heights or Chicago would allow the Bears to escape paying any property taxes on the new facility, the stadium authority could negotiate with the team on the distribution of revenues derived from the facility.

Such a stadium finance authority already exists on the state level under the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, or ISFA, which oversees the renovations and construction of sports stadiums in the state. ISFA is the owner of Rate Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, and financed the 2003 renovation of Soldier Field.

Still, by 7 p.m. Sunday, six hours before the session-ending deadline, no actual legislation had surfaced.

The last-minute plan left numerous questions about how such a plan would be carried out, let alone whether it would garner support in both the House and Senate. Crain’s Chicago Business was the first to report about the alternative plan. The absence of details left many questions, not the least of which is whether the Bears would accept an alternative proposal. There also were questions about how a local stadium authority would work or own a stadium site and how it would generate revenue.

Bears’ spokesman Scott Hagel did not respond to requests for comment about the status of negotiations on Sunday.

Also unresolved was the Bears’ request for roughly $855 million in infrastructure funding related to the Arlington Heights property.

Buckner said he did not know the specifics of Cunningham’s plan.

“The Senate has been very clear that they’re kicking around some new ideas with their caucus on what a last-ditch effort may look like. And so I’m looking forward to hearing what the response is in the Senate, and we’ll see what can happen before the end of the night,” Buckner told reporters.

“The language is what is going to drive the day when it comes to what happens here,” he said. “Details matter.”

Q: Ira, how real is this Orlando threat, now that they’ve hired a coach who worked well with Giannis Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee? That’s all we’ve been hearing now. – Steve.

A: This what happens when the passive-aggressive gameplan is in play, when neither the Bucks nor Giannis Antetokounmpo are publicly discussing trade parameters. Instead, you get ample connecting of the dots, including the Magic bringing in former Bucks assistant Sean Sweeney as their coach. And, yes, Orlando has prime winter weather, no state income tax and Disney (of which Giannis is said to be a big fan). But it ultimately comes down to more than that. It comes down to whether the Magic are ready to cash out Paolo Banchero for a player eight years older. And with the Magic with limited draft capital because of last year’s trade for Desmond Bane, it comes down to whether the Bucks would entertain a Magic bid with limited draft capital. A case could be made of Paolo being the best player the Bucks could acquire in the Giannis trade (including the age factor), so it comes down to the direction the Bucks choose to chart in a potential Giannis move. But it starts with the Magic, and not their coach, but rather their approach with Paolo.

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Q: Hi, Ira. I’ve got a Plan C question for you. Let’s assume the Miami Heat decide to run it back, banking on the expected improvement of their young players. That means another year of Kel’el Ware getting stronger, Kasparas Jakucionis having more experience, Jaime Jaquez Jr. building on his sixth-man candidacy, a resurgence by Nikola Jovic, who can’t possibly be as bad as he showed last season, and maybe the 13th pick. How much more competitive do you think they could be and, conversely, if they keep these young players and the future picks, from an asset situation standpoint, how much more competitive could their packages be for a young, disgruntled, superstar midseason or next summer? – Eddie.

A: Look, in a perfect world, it all could turn out perfectly. But what are the odds of that? Plus, the longer you hold on to developmental projects, the greater the chance that some regress while others progress. Could everything go right? Sure. But, as Jovic showed after getting his extension last summer, plenty can also go wrong. From a “package” standpoint, this appears to be as prime a time for the Heat to make a move as in recent years. The real problem is the lack of tradeable sizable salaries, with Terry Rozier gone, Norman Powell a free agent and Andrew Wiggins controlling his situation with a player option. It is why it likely could have been a simple equation this past February, at that trading deadline. Instead, as they often do, the Heat chose to live in the moment. At the moment, the only large salary the Heat can package would be Tyler Herro’s (assuming the party line stands with Bam Adebayo). And having only one large tradeable salary means the ability to move only in a single direction,

Q: If somehow the Heat are able to land Giannis Antetokounmpo, do you think they will be able to attract complimentary players at a discount as they did when they acquired LeBron James?  – Bob, Davie.

A: For all the questions about the Heat’s roster building when it comes to stars and failed chases, the constants have been creating talent through their developmental pipeline and luring complementary veteran components. The Heat still have most of the same developmental staff, so that shouldn’t change. And the Heat still are located in Miami, with no state income talent, so the luring of complementary components likely shouldn’t change, either.