Bronzeville Lakefront Grows In Renewed Efforts To Keep Bears In Chicago

Key Points:

• The development group Grit, comprising Farpoint Development, McLaurin Development Partners, and Capri Investment Group, has unveiled an expanded $10 billion proposal to keep the Chicago Bears in the city by building a new stadium and mixed-use district at the Bronzeville Lakefront site, now including Prairie Shores and airspace over McCormick Place marshalling yards.
• The new plan addresses previous issues from a rejected 2025 proposal by doubling the development area to 100 acres, allowing for the required 300-foot security perimeter around a 75,000-seat domed stadium and significantly enlarging the surrounding mixed-use district to maximize revenue.
• To accommodate the expanded site, three towers of the Prairie Shores complex would be demolished, with the developers committing to construct 1,500 replacement affordable housing units before demolition and offering existing residents five years of rent protection, plus additional student housing at Illinois Tech.
• The mixed-use district would feature 5,000 residential units, 2,000 hotel rooms, extensive commercial, office, health, and sports facilities, a 28-acre public park, new transit stations, and connections to McCormick Place and the lakefront, requiring demolition of some existing structures.
• Although Grit is pursuing a memorandum of understanding with a major capital provider and may offer to buy the Bears’ Arlington Heights property, the Bears organization has not participated in developing the plan and has not publicly commented on the proposal.