https://www.chicagobears.com/news/bears-...in-chicago

Proposal is to build new fixed roof NFL stadium on the Chicago Lakefront in the parking lot just south of existing Soldier Field. The old Soldier Field will be torn down and converted into a park, but the historic columns will remain.

The Bears and NFL will contribute $2.3B to the publicly owned stadium. The total stadium cost will be $3.2B. So there is a $900M gap that is expected will be paid by an existing hotel tax put in place to pay for the last Soldier Field renovation. Additional costs for park upgrades and infrastructure will add another $1.1B for a total cost of $4.3B for the entire project. It's not clear who would pay for the additional $1.1B in extra costs after the stadium is done.

This is essentially the plan Chicago should have rolled out in 2001 to instead of building an open air flying saucer on top of the old Soldier Field.

One thing that jumps out to me is the seating capacity for NFL games at the new Lakefront stadium is expected to be only 65k. This is similar to Las Vegas Allegiant stadium. Originally Vegas said they could expand to 72k for Super Bowls, but the 2024 Super Bowl in Vegas only had 61k total attendence. So I don't know what happened there.

This also sounds smaller than what the Bears were proposing for Arlington Heights, which I think was supposed be 70-80k for NFL games. It still makes me wonder why exactly the Bears are switching back to Lakefront stadium. The parking sounds worse, the stadium is smaller, and infrastructure costs more.