Chicago Bears, Churchill Downs Inc. close on sale of Arlington Park
Churchill Downs Inc. has closed on its agreement to sell the 326-acre Arlington Park property just outside Chicago to the NFL’s Chicago Bears, the company announced in a terse statement on Wednesday afternoon.
The agreement to sell the property was reached in September 2021. After reaching the $192 million deal, Churchill declined to seek racing dates for the 2022 season at Arlington and began auctioning off furnishings and equipment at the track, though the grandstand and the barns remain standing. Arlington employees also provided routine maintenance of the property through Tuesday, according to officials.
The announcement of the closing was accompanied on Wednesday by a separate “open letter” released from the Bears that cautioned the closing of the sale “marks a major development in the ongoing evaluation [of the site]” but that “there has been no decision that the development of the recently acquired property will occur.”
The Bears have been lobbying the state legislature and the local government in Arlington Heights for a raft of tax breaks and infrastructure funding for the development of the site. The Bears, who currently play at a downtown Chicago stadium owned by the city, have said that they want to develop a “mega-project” on the site that would include a stadium plus commercial and residential developments.
“This support, along with the team’s investment, will be crucial to ensuring the local and Illinois economies receive a dramatic, long-lasting influx of investment and new tax revenue of a magnitude never experienced before in the region,” the Bears’ “open letter” said.
Churchill Downs reached the deal to sell Arlington several years after acquiring a majority stake in a casino 15 miles from the track. The deal was also reached just two years after the state legislature passed a bill allowing racetracks to apply for casino licenses. Churchill declined to apply for the license, citing its dissatisfaction over the tax rates applied to the casinos.
A spokesperson for Churchill, Tonya Abeln, said that the closing of the deal means that the Bears “assume possession and responsibility for maintenance or development of the property,” which would include the costs to tear down the track and its barns.
Abeln added that CDI on Tuesday had removed a bronze statue depicting John Henry and The Bart nearing the finish line of the 1981 Arlington Million from the track and, for the time being, placed it in storage. The statue, called “Against All Odds,” was commissioned by former Arlington owner Dick Ducchossois, who died last year, after Arlington’s former grandstand burned to the ground in 1985. It was unveiled in 1989 and loomed large in the track’s paddock area.
David McCaffery, the executive director of the Illinois Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, said on Wednesday that his organization has reached out to the Bears in the hopes of opening a dialogue with the team about the possibility of reopening the track, even if a new stadium is built. The Bears’ current plan for a stadium takes up 120 acres of the site, leaving 200 acres left over.
“Basically, we told them that the closing of Arlington has left a tremendous hole in the Chicago racing community, and if there’s a way for us to co-exist, we would work with them,” McCaffery said.
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