Chicago Bears can keep billboard in Arlington Heights after village board votes to extend

While the Bears are assessing possible land in Indiana, their presence remains in Arlington Heights, with or without the team.

A billboard on the Bears' property in the northwest suburb will remain for another year after the village board approved its extension on Monday night.

The digital billboard teases Bears football games and other advertisements, but there are no planned games scheduled there.

Arlington Heights usually bans off-site ads and electronic signs.

The team made a bid for the property in 2021 before purchasing the former Arlington International Racecourse in February 2023 for $197 million.

Since then, the team floated a plan to build a new stadium on Chicago's lakefront, only later to back away from that plan and focus again on Arlington Heights. 

Meanwhile, momentum for stadium plans in Hammond, Indiana, continued to build, particularly after lawmakers in the Indiana State House Ways and Means Committee approved an amendment to Indiana Senate Bill 27 in February that would pave the way for the team to move to Hammond. The proposal would create a Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority with the power to issue bonds, acquire land, and finance construction.  

In April, the Illinois House voted to pass a so-called "megaprojects bill" that would have allowed the Bears or other developers investing at least $100 million in a project to negotiate property tax breaks with local governments. The bill was geared toward facilitatng the construction of a new Bears stadium in Arlington Heights.

But the bill failed, as the state Senate never voted on it. The Senate instead passed a bill just before the June 1 deadline that would have allowed local municipalities in Cook County with a population of more than 70,000 to set up their own stadium authorities. Arlington Heights and Chicago both meet that threshold.

But the House in turn adjourned for the spring without voting on that measure, and no measure to facilitate the construction of a new Bears stadium was passed at all in Illinois.

Soon afterward, Bears Chairman George McCaskey and President and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Warren confirmed the team's board of directors voted to build a stadium in Hammond, but the deal has not been finalized. The team has assessed land at Wolf Lake Terminals in Hammond, Indiana, for a possible new stadium.