I don't get down to Oak Brook much anymore, but was there this week and there is a massive tower crane up at the old McD's headquarters redevelopment.

300 plus acres up for sale as Churchill Downs is putting Arlington racetrack up for sale!

Can you say condos and shopping district ....On the good side the track will be open one last season.

^ the loss of arlington race track will bring a tear to my eye.

i don't get out there as often as i used to, but i have a lot of happy memories there.

i guess i gotta make sure to get out there one last time this summer.

Sad news, Chicago will no longer have a horse racing track.

there's still Hawthorne race track down in Stickney.

I wonder if the Chicago Fire will revisit that site. Granted I think the Bridgeview experience would have them wary of venturing out of the city again but it would have a certain major perk as a new home.

If residential goes there I would, of course, love to see it be a real TOD and not some half-baked lifestyle center but that would be hoping for a lot.

Arlington Heights is a real wildcard. They've certainly allowed dense development near their downtown to a greater degree than any comparable suburb (although Elmhurst is catching up). I think the risk is that they will look for a silver bullet that can be completed in a few years instead of a real mixed-use project that will take a generation to complete. You know, a stadium or an Amazon megawarehouse or something.

Personally I'd love to see something like the denser parts of Stapleton in Denver or Legacy Town Center in Plano TX. Mostly multifamily with some retail and really nice landscaping/street design. I don't see it being a retail-focused project though. The NW burbs are pretty over-retailed as it is.

The idea of the Bears buying the site and building a new, state-of-the-art stadium there has been floated.

My gut instinct is to soundly scoff at the idea, but after thinking it over for a minute it just makes great sense. Soldier Field is a cool stadium, but a terrible fan experience and completely outdated.

A new stadium with a retractable roof for December games (and a cold-weather city Super Bowl!), larger capacity, easier fan access and better amenities sounds pretty nice.

Sure, as long as they take $0 for it.

Jesus christ, can we stop talking about hosting super bowls already. That's not something you should strive for or spend literally billions in taxpayer money. Also, plenty of cold weather cities get by just fine with open-air stadiums. Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, Green Bay, Cincinnati, etc. Also note that Arlington Heights is not big enough to finance a megastructure like this, so the cost will likely need to be spread regionally via the ISFA or some other deal.

The Bears are locked into a long-term lease at Soldier Field until 2033. I'm guessing Arlington Heights doesn't want to wait that long, and the city is unlikely to let the Bears out of their lease just so they can flee to the suburbs.

I've warmed to the idea of a retractable roof stadium for the Bears but I don't see it happening in A.H. For SBs or Final 4s to be a regular rotation in this city I'd think the lure of downtown Chicago for pre/post events would be the honey. That is why an enclosed stadium annex as part of McCormick is by far the best scenario if a new 75k football stadium were built. I don't see the NFL or NCAA would find it all that alluring to have their Marque event in AH.

Like I mentioned about Arlington Park for the Fire though, practically half of the stadium is already built at Arlington Park with a layout very amenable for soccer. The only issue is could they reliably draw enough from the NW suburbs.

Stadiums don't have to cost the GDP of a small country, but the big 4 leagues are so fixated on "fan experience" now. Because every stadium needs 3 Shake Shacks and an outpost for every world cuisine. And then they sell off the naming rights to every doorknob and toilet in the place, so fans have to suffer the indignity of the Ex-Lax Exit to the Domino's Pizza Dome, brought to you by Alka-Seltzer. If they were really giving the fans what they wanted, it would be a bare-bones stadium with ample restrooms where you could attend a game for an affordable price.

Colleges do a far better job of building cost-effective stadiums and arenas, usually without public funds (or in the case of public universities, with a responsible amount of public funds).

There is no "regular rotation" of super bowls. The super bowl usually just goes to the city with the newest stadium. We'd get it for 1 year, and then it would move to another city the next year. Chicago would never get another Superbowl in that stadium. It's a complete idiot waste to build a stadium to attract the Superbowl. Seriously, look back at the last 10 Superbowls. Is there a "rotation" there? I agree with you on everything else but I hope the city doesn't fall for the "we need a Superbowl" fallacy ever again.

The fact that Soldier lacks a dome isn't the only reason the city isn't getting the Superbowl any time soon. From my understanding, the NFL requires a minimum stadium size, and Soldier is well below the cut off. We actually have the *smallest* stadium in the league, at 61,500 seats, and not only that... we actually *reduced* the number of seats when the stadium renovation was completed back in '02. The focus of the project was on adding more lucrative box suites, which were almost non existent in the old Soldier. The stadium also sadly but probably appropriately got delisted from the National Historic Landmark Register.

So the 'UFO landed in the Parthenon' for basically nothing, from the fan's point of view at least. And honestly, I am fine with Chicago not hosting the Superbowl. All the major sports have been seeing drastic declines in viewership and fan attendance since 2000, including the almighty NFL. No need to waste millions on a boondoggle for an enterprise that might be a much smaller and less profitable operation in a generation. And taxpayers certainly shouldn't have to pay for it either.

The moment CDI bought into Rivers Casino in Des Plaines, Arlington's fate was sealed. Bulldozing what is one of the most beautiful race tracks in the US to put up a light industrial park or a housing tract is a fitting tribute to the legacy of Dick Duchossois.

Supposedly, CDI wants to keep its license and re-locate, preferably within the Chicago area, or elsewhere in Illinois, failing that.

One possibilty for a re-location could be Balmoral Park, which is up for sale. The last harness race ran in 2015, and was then transformed into an equestrian center.

The rules currently forbid racing at Balmoral until 2026, but that could possibly be altered. If the facility becomes a racino, which is probably the only way to stay in business, the proposal would have to be approved by Hawthorne/Carey Family, as Balmoral is within 35 miles of Hawthorne.

It would also require an alteration to Illinois' gaming expansion legislation, as Balmoral is in Crete Township, which is not one of the south suburban townships permitted to apply for a racino license.

CDI is in the running for the casino license in Waukegan. They might decide to build a track there, if approved. It could capture the Milwaukee market as well as Chicago. It's located outside Hawthorne's 35-mile approval zone as well.

A new harness track/racino at the former Tinley Park Mental Health Center had received approval in 2019 from the Illinois Racing Board and was just months away from breaking ground when Pritzker refused to sell the property to the racino's investment group, headed up by Richard Heidner, because of questionable business associations. No other proposals have been made for the 280 acre site, which is located in an approved township, but requires Hawthorne's consent. So, that's a third possibility.

The South Works land is still available. It would require granting a second license within Chicago city limits and to secure Hawthorne's "O.K.", but that location could draw gamers/horse players in from Indiana, where the two tracks in that state are both located just outside of Indianapolis.

Plus, Hawthorne and the Carey Family filed for a second racing license for 2021, but without requesting specific dates. The handle at Hawthorne went up fairly dramatically in 2020, and construction has started on a new casino on Hawthorne's property. As casino revenues start to roll in, they may make a play for any of the properties mentioned above. It would be sweeter still if they could take over Arlington. But there is no way CDI will allow another track operator to buy it.

Yea, and all those cold weather cities with open air stadiums have equally shitty spectator experiences in December and (if the team is good) January, plus a basically unused stadium for nearly half the year.

And the long-term lease didn't stop the Fire from leaving Bridgeview. If a team wants to leave they'll pay to break the lease.

If they did this it would be insanely popular.

The "we need a Superbowl" is not the argument that should have been made two decades ago before the Soldier Field renovation began. An enclosed roof stadium would have been far more financially beneficial to the team and the city. If Soldier had been rebuilt enclosed, they'd have maybe up to 10 more major concerts a year. The Big Ten Championship would be played there every year, not Indianapolis. They would host a SB maybe every 10 years, but they would also host periodic Final Fours (Minneapolis gladly receives those) or a NCAAF Championship. Also more sparsely attended events like motocross or monster truck rallies. And now the Fire are back in current SF, too. There would be an annual CFB bowl game in Chicago as well as regular neutral site regular season games. This would be conservatively an additional 15 additional major events a year. Missing out on maybe 1 SB megaevent isn't the problem.

This isn't an argument for the Bears to relocate to AH or another 9-figure renovation, but the lack of foresight put the Bears and city in a far worse position. The renovations also limited capacity due to construction constraints so Chicago, the largest NFL market with one team, has the smallest stadium by capacity in the NFL. Traffic ingress/egress is a mess and the public transit situation is embarrassing for a huge stadium that close to the heart of one of the biggest cities in the US.

471 Crescent Blvd in Glen Ellyn, not far from a Metra stop. 86 apartments with some retail space. Currently a market and parking lot. Developers plan to demolish the structure as early as November

Street view:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/46...!4d-88.0691192

https://www.glenellyn.org/717/Glenwood-Station
https://www.glenellyn.org/ImageRepos...ocumentID=2049

Oak Park - 730 W Madison
 

Another Sr living facility with levels of underground parking.



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That fine Chicago Clay




May 1