Dear Kevin Warren: An Open Letter from Chicago Bears Season Ticket Holders
We've watched you play word games with our money. We've paid for our seats through blizzards and 4-win seasons. This lakefront has been our home for fifty years. You don't get to trade it away.
By Chicago Bears Season Ticket Holders · 2026-01-19
We've watched you play word games with our money. "Infrastructure" instead of "stadium subsidy." "Expanding" instead of "leaving." You say it's not about leverage while threatening to move to Indiana. We're not buying it.
We've paid for our seats through blizzards and 4-win seasons. We cheered when Payton broke records and wept when Ditka left. This lakefront has been our home for fifty years. You don't get to trade it away for a parking lot in the suburbs.
A Monument, Not a Venue
Soldier Field isn't just where the Bears play football. It's a war memorial, dedicated to the men and women who served this country. Those Greek Revival colonnades have stood since 1924. They've hosted Dempsey-Tunney. They've hosted FDR. They've hosted the first Special Olympics. That history doesn't belong to you—it belongs to Chicago.
When you call the lakefront "outdated" or "insufficient," you're not just insulting a building. You're insulting the hundred years of memories that happened inside it.
The Lakefront Belongs to the People
Daniel Burnham had it right in 1909: "The lakefront by right belongs to the people. Not a foot of its shore should be appropriated to the exclusion of the people." That vision built the city we love. Grant Park. The museum campus. The shoreline that belongs to everyone, not developers.
You've floated dome proposals, suburban relocations, and now Indiana threats—anything to escape the one place that keeps the Bears connected to Chicago's soul. We see what you're doing.
The lakefront by right belongs to the people.
Daniel Burnham, 1909
This Is Who We Are
The wind howling off Lake Michigan in December isn't a problem to solve—it's our identity. Bear weather. Home field advantage. The franchise that made legends in the cold while other teams hide under domes.
Buffalo is building a brand-new stadium right now. Outdoor. Green Bay has played outside since 1957. Kansas City set the world record for crowd noise—no roof required. The future of football isn't climate-controlled corporate boxes. It's authenticity. It's atmosphere. It's fans who want to be there.
We Know the Numbers
Your consultants promise 56,000 jobs and $10 billion in economic impact. Independent economists have studied these claims for decades.[^1] The verdict? Stadium subsidies don't pay off. The Brookings Institution calls them a losing bet.[^1] Stanford economists say you'd create more jobs by dropping the money from a helicopter.[^2]
Chicago already spent $460 million on Soldier Field in 2003.[^3] Now you want billions more, barely twenty years later. That's not economic development. That's manufactured obsolescence.
We're not asking you to love Soldier Field. We're asking you to respect what it represents: a public space, a war memorial, a century of Chicago history that doesn't fit in your spreadsheets.
You can threaten Indiana. You can rebrand "leaving" as "expanding." But we've been here since 1920, and we'll be here long after you're gone.
The lakefront is ours. Keep the Bears where they belong.
With respect and resolve,
The Season Ticket Holders of the Chicago Bears Football Club