Chicago Bears threaten to leave town, and this time politicians shrug – Chicago Tribune
The road from Soldier Field to Arlington International Racecourse is 31.2 miles and years in the making, marking it as potentially the longest and biggest scoring drive in Chicago Bears history.
A lot has changed in the decades since Chicago last confronted the issue of a new playground for the Bears, before the team settled into a vastly remodeled and reconfigured Soldier Field in 2003 after years of negotiations involving the city and the state.
There is the booming success of the National Football League and the value of its franchises, the growing importance of year-round climate-controlled stadiums as a revenue asset for teams and far greater public opposition toward subsidizing multibillion-dollar sports facilities for wealthy owners.
A spectacle of public corruption where those who don’t use the stadium pay for those who do. San Diego wisely opted out of the Chargers’ shakedown.