City of Portage shares proposal to become new stadium host site of the Chicago Bears with Halas Harbor project

Following the team’s deepest playoff run in 15 seasons, there is a lot of excitement in Chicago and many Northwest Indiana communities about what’s in store for the Chicago Bears. With the team in the process of trying to negotiate a new stadium deal, it has many communities surrounding the Windy City playing their best hand in the stadium sweepstakes.

This bidding war has extended beyond Illinois, making it a two-state battle featuring cities in Northwest Indiana. One of these cities is Portage, which held a press conference at the Marina Shores Yacht Club to share its proposal for bringing the Chicago Bears into the city on Wednesday, February 11.

The Portage project is called Halas Harbor, and the potential site sits along the Burns Waterway. City officials outlined the vision for this development during the press conference, highlighting the strategic advantages that this move could bring and outlining the basics of the funding mechanism. 

Local leadership discussed how this project would impact the Region. Mayor Austin Bonta believes that Portage is equipped to support a state of the art stadium and destination that is worthy of the team’s legacy as well as what the future holds.

“When the Chicago Bears announced that the entire Chicagoland area was being looked at as a potential site for the stadium, our team understood that we had an obligation to families, our city, and the Bears to offer them the best site possible with a realistic proposal,” Bonta said. “For this world-class site we now call Halas Harbor, we have the water, the location, the financing, and local leadership ready to embark on this opportunity.”

Andy Maletta, executive director of the Portage Economic Development Corporation, notes that this location is spacious and not too far away from where Soldier Field sits today.

“We have nearly 300 acres of controllable land, with close and easy access by car,” Maletta said. “Public transportation can come in through the South Shore railroad and even the possibility of water transportation.”

According to Mayor Bonta, this project is expected to be a $5 million cost with a $2 billion sinking fund. 

“We are open to other options if the state wants to get involved or if the Bears want to own the stadium,” Bonta said. “We are open to negotiating everything to create the best deal that works for the team, but we had to start somewhere and this is where we started with our proposal.”

While the upside is clear from the Portage perspective, Mayor Bonta believes this project will also benefit in-arena operations for the Chicago Bears.

“It gives the Bears everything they could want,” Bonta said. “It gives them full revenue opportunities relative to the tickets in their stadium. It doesn’t touch any of those things, or the food or the merchandising. It’s truly the financing plan of the future, and we’re excited about it.”

Bonta recalls as early as January 2024 that his team expressed interest in purchasing other properties on this site to make this large, contiguous amount of undeveloped land turn into a true destination site in Northwest Indiana.

“We thought, ‘You know what would be perfect? The Chicago Bears,’” Bonta said. “At the same time, this was when there was an original announcement of Arlington Heights. When the Chicago Bears announced that the search had expanded again to all of the Chicagoland area, we had to be on it. In addition to the site, we’ve acquired more property. It has a connection to the waterway in Lake Michigan and the highways and, quite frankly, the Bears only enhance that plan because it’s a major stadium development. It certainly brings in the exact kind of community the city has been planning for years.”

Along with what the stadium will look like, the City of Portage is also gearing up for what this could mean for its community as a whole.

“We see elite hospitality and mixed use residential,” said Wade Breitzke, CEO of WeCreate. “We see high-rise condos connected underground by a tunnel straight into the stadium. This is a venue and a village designed and ready to host Halas Harbor right here in Chicagoland on the lakefront.”

The Chicago Bears are expected to reach a final decision for the new stadium site in the coming weeks. Recent reports have also indicated that a development in Arlington Heights for the new stadium has gained momentum in recent weeks. In the meantime, the City of Portage will continue to push their project so that Chicago Bears President & CEO Kevin Warren has no choice but to circle Portage as the next home for the team.For more information on the City of Portage, you can visit portagein.gov.