Waukegan mayor throws ‘Hail Mary’ for Bears stadium – The Denver Post

There’s pie in the sky, and then there’s seven-layer cake daydreams. Apparently, Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor had the latter this week.

That’s when she didn’t have visions of sugarplums, but of the Chicago Bears finding a home in Waukegan for its $5 billion domed and multiuse football stadium plan.

Can you say Hail Mary?

Taylor became the latest suburban official to play the Bears baiting game. In a Monday letter to Kevin Warren, the team’s fairly new president and CEO, she extended an invitation to kick around what Waukegan has to offer.

That is if the team is serious about walking away from the site of the former Arlington International Racecourse or the Chicago Park District’s Soldier Field. Demolition is underway at the former horse-racing track.

Yet, the Bears say their Arlington Heights site, purchased in February for nearly $200 million, is no longer the “singular focus” for the new stadium. As Yogi Berra once said: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

With that in mind, I’ll go out on a narrow limb and say the Bears have little to no interest in siting that stadium in Waukegan. Or Naperville, which also has contacted the team, for that matter.

Good on the mayor for getting folks talking about Waukegan in the mix, and promoting the city. But if city officials had a chance to huddle with the Bears, Taylor might have put the whammy on her scheme when she invoked the name of native son Otto Graham Jr. in her letter.

That would be National Football League Hall of Famer Otto Graham who grew up in the city, graduated from Waukegan Township High School in 1939 and played football and basketball at the Big 10′s Northwestern University in the early 1940s. It was a nice touch to show the city’s ties to the George Halas era, when he was coach and owner.

But then she committed a turnover. Graham never played for the Bears.

He was a member of the Cleveland Browns, taking them to league championship title tilts from 1946 to 1955. Graham, who died in 2003 at age 82, also coached the Washington pro football team for three seasons in the 1960s.

True Waukegan history buffs also know Graham’s father was a music teacher. One of his pupils was another city native son — radio, movie and television star Jack Benny.

Taylor didn’t mention Benny in her letter to the Bears, but did point out Waukegan is located a mere 20 minutes from Halas Hall in Lake Forest, the Bears’ headquarters and training area. She also noted the city hosted the team’s temporary training center out near what is now Fountain Square back in the 1990s.

The core of her letter, though, said multiple areas of land, including lakefront property, could be developed by the team for its proposed stadium and entertainment district. The Arlington Heights property is nearly 400 acres, and the mayor didn’t disclose what Waukegan sites might be available for such a large undertaking.

“We believe that the Monsters of the Midway deserve the opportunity to continue the tradition of playing along the shores of Lake Michigan, with the market opportunity of having a year-round facility capable of hosting other major events, including the Super Bowl, the Final Four, and other events on an international scale,” the mayor wrote the team.

The city’s proximity to Interstate 94, Route 41 and Metra rail service on the Union Pacific’s North Line were other Waukegan pluses, she said.

“Our working class and diverse community is as tough as the 1985 Super Bowl-winning Bears, and our leadership team at Waukegan City Hall is as aggressive as Justin Fields running the ball downfield when it comes to creating economic opportunities for our City, our residents, and the region at large,” Taylor said in the letter. “Our City’s staff and I invite you and your leadership to come to Waukegan to learn about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity our City can offer the Bears.”

The mayor also went long in her letter by reminding team officials players have lived in Lake County for generations. “Some members of the Bears organization currently live in my neighborhood in Waukegan,” she said of the city’s far southwest side.

It will be interesting to see how Bears’ officials react to Waukegan being in the stadium mix. But with Arlington Heights believed to remain the team’s favorite stadium location, the mayor’s last-minute blitz sounds more like just a scrimmage than game day.

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

[email protected].

Twitter: @sellenews

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