Illinois Megaproject Bill: A Bears Incentive with Wide Property Tax Ramifications
Aerial image of the site in Arlington Heights where the Chicago Bears are looking to build a stadium complex (Cook County GIS, 2025).
Introduction
The Chicago Bears’ quest to secure property “tax certainty” for its proposed $5 billion domed stadium project in Arlington Heights has dominated the debate over megaprojects legislation being considered by the Illinois General Assembly.
That singular focus obscures the fact that the megaprojects legislation would have significant economic effects well beyond the northwest suburbs.
If enacted, the megaprojects bill would not just provide “tax certainty” — a break on property taxes that’s cemented for decades — to the team’s owners, but also other projects in the state that cost at least $100 million to launch.
Two other multibillion-dollar development sites in Cook County have already been noted as likely beneficiaries of the megaprojects bill: the proposed $20 billion mixed-use One Central Project on a 34-acre site just west of the Bears current home venue, Soldier Field, and a potential new stadium for the White Sox baseball team on the west bank of the Chicago River’s South Branch, south of Roosevelt Road.
Just in Chicago’s Loop and Near West Side, the Chicago planning department lists at least five projects with price tags of more than $100 million that were under construction in 2025 alone.
The bill also would exempt megaproject construction materials from state and local sales taxes, while also expanding the opportunity for developers of other major projects to pay for their developments with Sales Tax and Revenue, or STAR, bonds that are backed by state and local sales taxes that would otherwise increase government revenue.
And it creates New Opportunities for Vacation and Adventure, or NOVA, urban districts, which are for STAR bond-financed projects that comprise at least 20 acres, cost more than $1 billion, generate at least $450 million in average gross annual sales, draw more than 2 million visitors a year and create an average of at least 3,000 jobs over the life of the district. When NOVA urban districts are established, the amount of sales and hotel taxes paid to the state and local governments would be frozen, with taxes collected above those frozen amounts used to back up to $1.6 billion in bonds issued to finance the development.
Megaproject property tax savings could total billions of dollars — money that would otherwise go to fund schools and other local governments.
Huge real estate projects can create jobs, boost sales tax revenue and provide other benefits to their surrounding communities. But property tax breaks for megaprojects would for decades severely limit one key goal of economic development: expansion of the property tax base that provides relief to other taxpayers who get no tax certainty.
And those savings aren’t the only property tax subsidies afforded to businesses in the state that, at the very least, limit expansion of the property tax base. State and local programs, including tax increment financing districts, and yearslong property tax assessment reductions for new and expanding businesses, have over the decades shifted more of the property tax burden onto homeowners and businesses that don’t get those kinds of breaks.
Expansion of the property tax base would be particularly beneficial in Illinois, given that the state has the second-highest residential property taxes in the nation, while Chicago has the highest commercial property taxes and the second-highest industrial property taxes in the country.
There also are several currently unanswered questions about the legislation, which has been approved by the Illinois House and is now being considered by the Senate:
- Will the tax payments that are negotiated through the bill be enough for local schools and municipal governments to provide the services made necessary by the new projects?
- Will businesses and homeowners who live in the same cities and villages where megaprojects are approved get any form of tax relief, or will they end up paying more than they otherwise would have?
- Is it fair and equitable to provide tax certainty for wealthy developers when such tax certainty is rarely granted to homeowners, who pay the bulk of property taxes in Illinois?
- Will the megaprojects increase overall economic activity where they are located and across the state, or will they simply move economic activity from one area of the state — or one part of Cook County, for that matter — to another?
This analysis, from the Office of Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas, provides background information as legislators seek to answer those questions and try to determine whether the megaprojects bill benefits all the state’s taxpayers and its overall economy, rather than just the developers and sports team owners with a few hundred million dollars to spend.
What’s in the Megaprojects Bill?
The Illinois House in April approved a 376-page megaproject bill that is now before the Senate. Key elements include:
A property tax freeze for “megaprojects”
The assessed value used to determine the amount of property tax bills for commercial or industrial projects that cost at least $100 million would be frozen before construction starts.
The assessment freeze would last for 25 years on projects that cost $100 million to $500 million, 30 years on projects that cost $500 million to $1 billion and 40 years on projects with costs topping $1 billion. The frozen assessed values would be adjusted annually for inflation.
Special payments
On top of the taxes paid on the frozen value, property owners would have to pay an additional “special payment." The amount of that payment would be negotiated with a panel of representatives of each taxing body within the megaproject area. Such arrangements typically are known as a “payment in lieu of taxes,” or PILOT.
The agreement can include terms to change the special payment amount, up or down, over time. One provision allows payments to be increased to cover additional costs for local schools that can be linked to the new development, but does not require the agreement to specifically address increased costs for other local governments.
The special payment must be at least equal to 10% of the amount of taxes paid on the property one year before the frozen value is set, unless the total value of the project exceeds $2 billion — in which case it hypothetically could be 0%.
Taxing units would vote on the deal, with their votes weighted by their share of total tax bill. In the case of the Bears’ project, school districts in Arlington Heights and Palatine that serve the stadium area would have more than 50% voting strength. Across Illinois, school districts’ tax levies account for more than 60% of all property taxes billed.
Property tax relief funds
Only half of special payments would go to local schools and governments. The other half would be used for property tax relief, with 60% of that money going to homeowners in taxing districts within the megaproject’s boundaries and 40% to homeowners across the state.
The half-and-half split of the special payment was added late in the drafting process, but later was questioned by Gov. JB Pritzker and the Bears, given that it would likely push taxing units to demand special payments that are twice as high.
Pritzker said the statewide relief would be miniscule — $1.29 per homeowner on a hypothetical $20 million PILOT payment.
That same hypothetical pilot payment could, however, provide much larger tax relief amounts to homeowners within a megaproject’s taxing districts — a decision that would be left to the municipality where the project is located. If the relief came in the form of rebates doled out equally to just the 23,000 or so homeowners in Arlington Heights, the relief would amount to about $280 per homeowner — or 3.3% of the village’s median 2024 residential tax bill of $8,416.
However, if it went to every homeowner in Cook County, because the county and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District levy taxes in the Bears megaproject area, homeowners across the county would get about $5 in relief each year.
Amusement taxes
The bill allows municipalities to assess an amusement tax of up to 9% on megaproject businesses funded with STAR bonds. They would be allowed on all types of activities, such as renting a hotel room, playing a round of golf or attending a football game.
The amusement tax provision reportedly is unattractive to the Bears. Although the legislation excludes the proposed stadium from an amusement tax, it could apply to the surrounding development. However, as a home-rule community, Arlington Heights already can assess an amusement tax, such as the 10-cent tax on admission that the village imposed at the former racetrack.
Sales tax break, expansion of STAR bonds and NOVA bonds
The bill also includes the no-tax on megaproject construction materials provision, the expansion of STAR and NOVA bond programs— as well as the establishment of Railroad Rehabilitation and Economic Development for Yards, or RREDY, megaprojects.
The RREDY megaprojects are designed to promote commercial development on or near railroad facilities, which could help finance at least three projects in Chicago: the 78 project on 68 acres of former railroad property in the South Loop, where the city already has approved a TIF agreement and a new Chicago Fire soccer stadium is being built; the old Michael Reese Hospital property that sits on 48 acres in the South Side’s Bronzeville neighborhood; and the proposed 34-acre One Central project west of Soldier Field.
For a project to qualify for RREDY, it must be capable of generating $40 billion in new taxes over 40 years and increasing public transit ridership by at least 10,000 a day. RREDY megaprojects would qualify for the same 40-year assessment freeze and special payment provisions as other megaprojects that cost at least $1 billion. The bill requires those job and tax forecasts be provided by an “independent, third-party feasibility analysis” but does not spell out who would choose the vendor or how they would be paid.
The Bears Proposal
The Bears in 2023 purchased the 326-acre former Arlington International Racecourse property for $197.2 million. Plans for the site released in 2025 envision the stadium and a surrounding mixed-use development with 1,150 residential units, 400 hotel rooms, 300,000 square feet of retail space and 200,000 square feet of office space.
The team plans to spend $2 billion on the stadium. In addition to demanding property tax certainty, the team also wants the state to spend $855 million on surrounding infrastructure, including improvements to nearby highways.
Bears officials state that the project will create more than 9,000 permanent jobs “statewide” and generate $60 million in local and state taxes. The project also would attract major sporting and music events that would draw an estimated 1.5 million annual visitors, according to the team.
A village-commissioned study that focused on local, rather than statewide, impacts concluded that the stadium development would create 5,400 jobs and generate $15.1 million in new annual tax revenue, a figure that does not include any property taxes.
But the team maintains that the ability to negotiate property tax payments “is also needed to move forward.” That would reduce the team’s yearly tax payments, which would amount to an annual operating subsidy, given that every dollar not spent is an extra dollar of profit for the team.
Under Megaprojects Proposal, Bears Would Save Tens of Millions Per Year
It’s hard to know what the market value of a brand-new, 70,000-seat domed stadium would be, because there’s nothing else like it in Illinois.
However, stadium tax expert Geoffrey Propheter, an associate professor at University of Colorado Denver, estimated a conservative assessable market value of $675 million for a completed stadium.
Under the megaprojects legislation, if the current assessed value becomes the frozen value, and there is no special payment as allowed under the proposed statute, the bill would be less than $4 million. Assuming the Bears negotiate to pay a $10 million PILOT on top of their $4 million frozen bill, the team would get an annual tax break of more than $39 million — or more than $1.5 billion over 40 years.
The Bears are valued at more than $8 billion, generate $625 million in annual income and net about $80 million a year in profit at the team’s current Soldier Field location. If the Bears move to Arlington Heights, with the team owning its own stadium, profits would be even higher.
The Bears have long maintained the need for additional state-funded infrastructure and lower property tax payments to build a new stadium. But Pritzker and the General Assembly for years balked at subsidizing a wealthy sports team when the state faced myriad other financial pressures, including soaring public pension payments and reduced federal funding.
Legislators and the governor were also concerned that $467 million in Soldier Field debt remained outstanding, and the Bears would pay no more than $90 million to break the lease — leaving the city and state to make up the difference.
Arlington Heights school leaders also wanted to be certain that the development would generate sufficient property tax revenue.
A massive development would increase local costs, whether it be to educate more children living in the residential portion of the development or provide adequate police and fire protection for the entire development.
After the Bears challenged the initial property tax assessment of $192 million and the $16 million tax payment it would trigger, school and other local government officials in December 2024 came to an agreement with the Bears to set the assessment at $124 million through 2027 and increase the assessment by the rate of inflation from 2028 to 2031. The initial $124 million assessment resulted in a 2024 tax bill of $3.6 million.
The amount of an additional special payment, if any, under the megaprojects bill has yet to be negotiated. Nevertheless, Arlington Heights Mayor Jim Tinaglia backs the bill.
Meanwhile, state officials are now rushing to pass the megaprojects bill before the end of the Spring legislative session on May 31, 2026 — efforts that began in earnest when Indiana legislators and the Hoosier State’s governor enacted a law that would provide $1 billion in assistance to the team for a domed stadium in Hammond, Ind., just across the state line. Pritzker, meanwhile, supports the idea of a megaprojects bill not just for the Bears, but for other major developments.
Should the Illinois bill become law, one key question will remain: would the amount of property taxes the team and any other megaproject developers end up paying be enough to cover the increased costs of education and other local services made necessary by their projects?
The bill does include provisions that require projections of resulting additional costs to schools and mandates that districts be compensated, but there is nothing that guarantees similar analysis of impacts on non-school government services, such as new infrastructure, police and fire protection, trash pickup and inspections.
If the frozen payment and special payment are not high enough to fund those added services, other taxpayers, particularly homeowners, would have to make up the difference. That, in effect, would be an additional subsidy paid by people who live in Arlington Heights and potentially any other community that is home to a megaproject.
Researchers: Public Stadium Subsidies are a Net Economic Loss
Backers of the Bears’ stadium project point to a new, high-profile, sports-focused district as a unique economic development opportunity. But nearly every study conducted by researchers and economists has determined that stadiums and arenas fall massively short of delivering on their claims of producing jobs and boosting the local economy. That consensus among economists, however, has not stopped cities across the country from providing massive sports stadium subsidies.
In a 2017 poll of members of the US Economic Experts Panel convened by University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, 52% of economists agreed that the benefits of subsidies for sports stadiums were likely far outweighed by the costs, with only 2% disagreeing and the rest offering either no opinion or answer. Among the economists who did answer, 82% agreed that the costs of stadium subsidies outweighed the benefits.
Even for the host community, the benefits may not equal the costs. Multiple studies that analyzed whether stadiums generate more economic activity for the host communities found the economic benefits to be modest and usually well below the amount of subsidies or breaks that teams received to build or use a given stadium.
Studies also found that spending at a sports stadium reduced spending on other entertainment options. Sports venues’ positive economic spillovers typically were confined to a relatively small area around the venue. In addition, large events increase traffic and can hurt businesses unrelated to sports and entertainment.
Stadiums also don’t seem to create long-term jobs, even for construction workers during the time under construction. A study in Minneapolis-St. Paul during a span when four new sports venues were built, and another study on St. Louis during the construction of two others, didn’t show significant impacts on construction jobs. Although construction jobs at stadiums pay well — far better than service jobs at stadiums — the workers on them moved from other major construction projects in the area, the studies found.
How Much Other Teams Pay in Property Taxes
Chicago’s other professional sports teams’ property tax bills vary, if they have bills at all. The Bears and White Sox play in publicly-owned stadiums, which are property tax exempt.
- The Bulls and Blackhawks, which jointly own and operate the United Center and adjacent Advocate Center practice and office facility, paid $10.8 million in 2024.
- The Cubs paid around $14.1 million in property taxes on Wrigley Field and the team’s various other buildings around Wrigleyville. The stadium itself, the second-oldest in Major League Baseball, received a property tax break afforded to historic renovations that has expired. Wrigley in 2024 had a property tax bill of $3.9 million.
- The White Sox play at Rate Field, which pays no property taxes because it is owned by the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. But the team pays about $2 million a year in rent.
- The Bears currently pay no property taxes on their home field, Chicago Park District-owned Soldier Field, but the team’s lease with the district includes around $7 million per year in rent. The team collects all revenue from tickets, concessions and more than 2,000 parking spaces near the stadium on game days. Soldier Field rentals for all events in 2024 totaled $64 million, the second-largest revenue stream for the district after property taxes.
Tax bills across the sports world vary significantly, based on local tax rates and whether their home state taxes leases on publicly-owned venues.
- SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., owned by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke and shared with the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers, was built for around $5 billion. Its owners paid $14.3 million in property taxes in 2025, according to the Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector.
- Chase Center in San Francisco, privately funded arena for the Golden State Warriors, paid $18.1 million in property taxes in 2025.
- TD Garden in Boston, privately owned venue where the Celtics and Bruins play, paid $2.7 million in 2025.
Conclusion
The Bears say they will spend $2 billion on the stadium, and related development will have an annual “economic impact” of $1.3 billion statewide over 40 years before any property tax payments are made.
But there are many sites across Cook County where a private development draws visitors from outside the immediate community, generates sales taxes and employs workers on a similar scale to what the Bears have projected for their stadium complex, despite having relatively smaller footprints.
Old Orchard Mall in Skokie draws 13 million customers annually, generates more than $50 million in state and local sales tax revenue – compared with $27 million projected by the Bears for the team’s development – and employs 2,500 people at a location that is open 363 days per year. The property tax bill for the 74-acre mall was $17.6 million in 2024.
Stadium supporters have suggested that Arlington Heights and Illinois are faced with the stark choice of having “a world-class stadium, or nothing,” which assumes that 326 acres of undeveloped land in a community with a median income of $117,000, at a location adjacent to major highways and a Metra commuter train stop, would remain vacant unless a stadium is built there. Arlington Park owners had put the property on the market in February 2021, and the Bears had submitted their bid by that June.
Being the hometown of the Bears, according to supporters of the team’s move to Arlington Heights, as well as those who want the Monsters of the Midway to remain in Chicago, confers status on the community that is a substantial intangible benefit in a way that a shopping mall cannot. And for many Chicagoans, the Bears are an iconic presence, some might say as much an emblem of the city as Willis Tower. Willis Tower paid $50 million in property taxes in 2024.
Sports stadium megaprojects may not solve all municipal funding problems. In Arlington, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, the city has still faced budget deficits in recent years, despite development of an entertainment zone anchored by stadiums for both the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers baseball team, both of which are owned by the city.
It’s also worth noting that a Bears stadium in Hammond would be just 20 miles from Soldier Field, compared to the 38-mile distance from the city to Arlington Heights. As a result, a stadium in Hammond would still produce economic benefits for Chicago and the state of Illinois — with Indiana taxpayers picking up the $1 billion tab to subsidize the development.
And the team would still be named the Chicago Bears, so bragging rights would still be intact for the Chicago area just as they are for New York City even though the New York Giants and New York Jets play in New Jersey.
The questions that apply to the Bears also can be raised for other development proposals, such as One Central — a project that would be eligible for both a reduced tax bill and the ability to pay off bonds with state and local sales taxes.
Should those other developments get built, would the property tax payments be enough to provide services to them? Would sales tax gains simply get plowed back into bonds rather than fund government services? The benefits for the Bears and other megaproject developers are clear, while the benefits for Illinois residents are murky.
And if there’s no expansion of the property tax base and only limited sales tax benefits, how do taxpayers benefit? That’s the multibillion-dollar question.
– Andy Grimm, Cook County Treasurer’s Office Research Team
May 2026