The one thing nobody has discussed in this thread so far:

$60.5 million

If moving back to the city wasn't financially a good gamble, then when did they pay that much to get out of their lease with Bridgeview?

That's a lot of effen money. Obviously being downtown is valuable to this franchise.

yep. it's fantastic news!

there's no way that this move will do anything other than benefit the team, and the league in general, by being front and center in the heart of one of america's greatest cities, rather than being lost out in the obscurity of bridgeview.

Fantastic news!!!

Hiding in plain sight.
 

As far back as 1995, I was touting where the Chicago 'soccer specific stadium' should be.
The site already existed. If we had obtained the Chicago POWER indoor franchise in June 1995, we would have played an outdoor exhibition game there (v. Detroit).
The site remains available.
It is Rockne Stadium at Roosevelt and Central. Of course, it would have to be rehabbed and expanded. But this cannot be a deal breaker.
The Blue Line "L" Forest Park branch shall be extensively renovated when the Illinois Dept. of Transportation announces its plan to rework the Eisenhower Expy. A new station at Central Ave. will be upgraded to handle crowds which should seemingly follow.
This will unquestionably revive the entire far west side of Chicago, as well as adjacent suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn, and perhaps Oak Park and Forest Park. :yes:

^Not bad

source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/sport...bge-story.html

so, soldier field?

Until they can get their own stadium built at Michael Reese development.

Ugh, great. Another site with zero transit access. Michael Reese is twice as far from 35th St Green Line as Soldier Field is from Roosevelt. Not sure how they expect people to come and go from there without huge parking facilities.

They should really just work with the state to build a stadium next to Sox Park. Existing Red Line station, existing parking facilities.

When I looked at the schedule, they didn't have any conflict with Bears games.

Just add a stop at 26th Street and call it a day. A secondary benefit would be all the undeveloped land right next to the Green Line that could now be TOD. A soccer-only stadium won't hold 65,000 people like Soldier Field or even 40,000 like G Rate, so it has different transit needs.

I wouldn't call "literally on top of a metra station" "zero transit access"...

The best part is this will be easily connected to the ONE CHICAGO transit hub!

:notacrook:

great news , i have been waiting for this 10 years now , i can finally go to the games again!

Is this 100% confirm?

A train that runs every half-hour on weekends isn't really the best way to get people to/from a stadium. They could add extra service, but if they're not willing to do that for the Bears I don't know why they would do it for the Fire. Plus the station is old and rickety, and definitely not ADA-compliant.

I guess this plan might make sense if CTA ever takes over Metra Electric and runs 5-minute frequencies here, but that's far from certain right now.

We've seen what a stadium built without transit access looks like: the United Center. I don't really want to see a huge sea of parking rise up on prime lakefront land. But, yeah, I guess some of the pie-in-the-sky parts of the One Chicago plan might also help a stadium down here.

update:


source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...nu4-story.html

Fire Money
 

I won't be shocked if the Fire enter into a broadcasting rights contract with the Cubs and their new Marquee Regional Sports Network. Marquee needs to fill airtime when the Cubs are not playing, and the Fire need revenue and exposure. The timing of the move seems like an odd coincidence given the pending launch of this new cable station next year and this could very likely be the source of the money being used to buy out of their existing lease.

You may be right about the Fire/Marquee hook. But that wont be near enough programming to fill up time. MLS is only 40 games/year and it overlaps MLB season entirely. I look for the Blackhawks to be in the mix. 82 games and it will fill the Oct-March void. But i dont know their tv deal terms.

At one time there was talk of Detroit as part of the Marquee. Even though the Tigers suck, it would make sense as they are in the AL and do not compete against Cubs. And if they combined Tigers/Redwings with Cubs/Blackhawks they would have alot of dates covered with live sports.

I sort of think "the state" has other fish to fry, and in any case why should the state continue to build sports facilities for teams that are owned by an investor? Joe can cough up the money.

"Just" add a stop - any clue how many millions of our tax dollars that would cost?

Sure, about $50 million. This wouldn't be our first new CTA station, so the costs shouldn't really be a surprise.

• New $50 Million Green Line Station Planned Near United Center
• Washington/Wabash was $75 million, but in the Loop with far more trans passing through
• $50 million for the new Cermak-McCormick stop

The Bronzeville TIF would be a great source of funding for a project like this. You will also notice some of the above stations were financed by the Federal Government. The state also just passed a $40 billion infrastructure bill which this project could certainly fit into.

I never said the state has to pay for it. But the ISFA owns Sox Park and all of the surrounding lots, so they'd have to be on board with redevelopment of that area. Redevelopment that is sports-related would seem to be a better fit than a casino complex or mixed-use redevelopment. We've already seen from Lincoln Yards that big developers think they can make big real-estate plays on the back of a pro soccer team.



An expensive station that would still be almost a mile from the Michael Reese site. Metra Electric is right there, but any kind of real rapid transit service on that railroad is years away, if it ever happens.