The Infrastructure Myth - What SB 27 Actually Built
Ben Devine (@Chicago_NFL) says public transit infrastructure is already done. He's counting the down payment and calling it a finished house. Update: Illinois let its stadium bills die, and the Hammond infrastructure still doesn't exist.
By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-04-02
Ben Devine (@Chicago_NFL on X), who covers the Bears stadium situation closely, says public transit infrastructure for a Hammond Bears stadium is "already done." He's counting the down payment and calling it a finished house.
Let's walk through what actually exists and what doesn't.
Updated June 2026: Illinois folded, and the Hammond gap got bigger
We first published this in April. Two months later the story moved, so we went back through it with what we've learned.
The big change happened in Springfield. Illinois went home for the summer on June 1 without passing a stadium bill. HB 910, the property-tax mechanism built for an Arlington Heights dome, cleared the House 78-32 on April 22 and then never got a Senate floor vote. A second bill, HB 958, passed the Senate 37-17 at around 3:30 in the morning on June 1, and the House never took it up. Both are dead for the spring session. Reviving either one now takes a three-fifths supermajority, and the earliest effective date is January 2027.
Kevin Warren told the league in April that the Bears can't build anywhere without "tax certainty." Illinois just handed him the opposite. So the Hammond conversation got louder overnight, and Devine's "it's already done" line is getting passed around again as if Illinois folding somehow finished the roads in Indiana.
It didn't. Here's the part that matters: nothing concrete has been built in Hammond either. Public radio in Indiana confirmed on June 1 that there are no binding agreements, no land acquired, no environmental review underway, and no financing locked beyond the bond structure SB 27 authorizes. Illinois losing a vote does not pour a single yard of Indiana concrete. The two things aren't connected.
And the weeks since have only confirmed it. The Bears board voted June 5 to "advance" Hammond, a 74-word statement with no lease, no financing, and no land purchase attached. Drilling rigs showed up at Wolf Lake Terminals at the end of June to test the soil. That's due diligence, not a deal. Even Hammond's own mayor says Indiana lawmakers have to go back and amend SB 27 to fit the site they've now pinpointed.
Everything below is why "already done" was wrong in April and is still wrong now.
What SB 27 Actually Is
Indiana SB 27, signed into law February 26, 2026, is enabling legislation. That means it creates the machinery to borrow money and repay it with new taxes. It does NOT allocate cash. It does NOT build infrastructure.
Here's what it authorizes:
The Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority can issue bonds. And here's a detail the press coverage keeps getting wrong: the construction bonds are general obligation bonds issued by the City of Hammond. Not the state of Indiana. Hammond. That pledges Hammond's full faith, credit, and taxing power. If the dedicated taxes come up short, Hammond's general tax base is what's on the hook. The "state-backed, no taxpayer risk, just like Lucas Oil" line you've heard is not what the statute says.
Those bonds get repaid through a stack of taxes that mostly don't exist yet, because each one has to be adopted locally: - 12% admissions tax on stadium event tickets (Hammond ordinance) - A Professional Sports Development Area that needs State Budget Committee review and State Budget Agency approval - 1% food and beverage tax in Lake County and in Porter County, each by June 30, 2027 - Lake County innkeeper's tax raised from 5% to 10% - Renegotiated Indiana Toll Road lease revenue, amount still TBD
Porter County is the soft spot. Its commissioners are already on record saying their taxpayers shouldn't subsidize a billionaire's stadium, and Porter can decline its slice without killing the deal. When it does, that hole rolls downhill onto Hammond's general obligation pledge.
One more myth to puncture. That ~$700 million in renegotiated Toll Road money? It isn't stadium money. The Indiana Finance Authority parks it in a reserve for seven-county regional transportation, "associated with" the relocation but not pledged to the stadium bonds. It's a separate pot, and the state shares the downside if toll revenue underperforms.
Governor Mike Braun, April 1, 2026, asked about extending the South Shore Line to the stadium: "We're not going to make any promises other than we're going to be easy to deal with, and we're going to move quickly."
Not. Going. To. Make. Any. Promises.
What SB 27 Is Not
SB 27 is not a construction plan. It doesn't promise to build roads, extend transit, or fix utilities. It's not even cash in hand. It's permission to borrow money contingent on taxes being collected contingent on a stadium being built contingent on a location being chosen.
And location choice still hasn't happened. The Bears' own statement after the Illinois session collapsed kept the window open: they'll "finalize our evaluation of both Arlington Heights and Hammond." Warren's "late spring, early summer" decision window came and went. That decision is still ahead of us.
The South Shore Line Reality
The South Shore Line Monon Corridor extension opened March 31, 2026. Cost: $943 million. Extends service to Munster and Dyer, south of Hammond.
Proposed stadium location: Lost Marsh Golf Course area, Hammond, near Wolf Lake.
Distance from the nearest South Shore Line station to the proposed stadium: 3 miles.
Direction the new line goes: south. Direction the stadium is: north-central, toward Wolf Lake. These are not compatible geometries.
The South Shore extension is real infrastructure. But it doesn't serve the stadium. That's the sleight of hand in Ben's statement. He's pointing at one project and calling it another. The South Shore Line's own social media even posted "Welcome to Hammond Chicago Bears" after the Illinois news, which is great enthusiasm and zero new track toward Wolf Lake.
The Infrastructure That Actually Needs to Happen
Roads and highway access. This is the weakest part of the "closer to Chicago" pitch, and almost nobody checks it. There is still no published traffic study, no road-widening plan, and no transit plan tying the site to a station. Moving 60,000 to 70,000 people in and out of the Wolf Lake site runs straight into the Borman Expressway (I-80/94), the busiest, most congested stretch of interstate in Indiana at more than 200,000 vehicles a day. INDOT is explicitly not adding lanes there because the right-of-way is tapped out, and the corridor is under active construction from spring 2026 into late 2029. Worse, the direct route from Chicago is two privately leased toll roads in series: the Chicago Skyway, on a 99-year lease to Canadian pension funds, hands off to the Indiana Toll Road, on a 75-year concession run by IFM Investors. No public agency, not Illinois, not Indiana, not the Bears, can order game-day capacity or toll relief on the road everyone would actually drive. Even the Cline Avenue alternative crosses a privately operated toll bridge. Suburban mayors demanded a traffic study of the Arlington Heights bid. Nobody has produced one for Hammond.
Parking infrastructure. A 70,000-seat stadium needs parking. The current site is a golf course. Parking infrastructure costs scale with capacity. This is not sized. This is not funded. Design doesn't start until after site selection and permitting.
Utilities. Water, sewer, electrical, storm water. The site is near Wolf Lake, a conservation area with wetlands and flooding concerns. Water and sewer infrastructure must be installed before construction completes. This is not scoped. Cost estimates do not exist publicly.
Environmental assessment. This is bigger than "due diligence." The stadium parcel is the old Barstow steel-mill slag dump, roughly 3.5 million cubic yards of slag and fly ash, capped in the early 2000s under Indiana's Voluntary Remediation Program. That cap is containment, not cleanup. The toxic material is still there, under an engineered cover. Right next door is the Federated Metals Superfund site (EPA ID 0501275), which EPA finalized on the National Priorities List on September 6, 2023, with lead and arsenic contamination from decades of smelting. EPA's March 2026 Proposed Plan tackles the residential soil first and openly defers vapor intrusion and groundwater to later study. The stadium parcel sits in the operable unit that has no selected remedy yet. Dig foundations, piles, and dewatering through that cap and you re-expose the slag and pull federal cleanup liability onto whoever disturbed it. Then add the obvious: this is across the fence line from BP Whiting, the largest oil refinery in the Midwest. Kevin Warren, April 1, 2026: "working through traffic, and construction items, and transportation." In other words, we haven't started. The soil borings that finally began in late June are the beginning of due diligence, not the end of it.
Last-mile transit connection. South Shore Line provides no station within walking distance of the stadium. No shuttle service exists. No local transit extension is planned. Governor Braun will not commit to one. This is the fundamental gap in "public transit infrastructure is already done." The transit doesn't go there.
The Land Itself Is a Locked Door
Here's a problem we missed in April, and it might be the biggest one. The site isn't an empty lot waiting for a buyer. Lost Marsh and the 410-acre Wolf Lake Memorial Park are public land, held by the City of Hammond through the Hammond Port Authority. And Wolf Lake Memorial Park is dedicated as a public park under Indiana Code 36-10-15.
That statute has teeth. If Hammond converts the dedicated land "to a use other than as a public park," the Indiana General Assembly "may withdraw all of the dedicated real property from the city without compensation." A domed NFL stadium is exactly that kind of conversion. So before anyone pours concrete, the legislature would likely have to amend or release the park dedication. That's a separate state vote sitting on top of SB 27 and on top of any Hammond council action, and the Stadium Authority's eminent-domain power can't make it go away. You can't condemn your way out of another government's parkland dedication.
There's also an open question worth a records request: if Wolf Lake or Forsythe Park ever took federal Land and Water Conservation Fund money, converting the land needs National Park Service sign-off and replacement parkland of equal value. That would stack a federal approval on top of the state one.
The Timeline Squeeze
Bears want a decision by June 2026. Design phase begins summer 2026. Stadium target opening: 2030. That's four years.
Construction cannot begin until environmental review is complete, site permits are approved, and infrastructure design is finalized. All of that must happen in the first year or eighteen months of the project timeline, running in parallel with stadium design and construction.
Infrastructure doesn't get built last. It gets built concurrent with the stadium. That means crews break ground on roads, utilities, and parking in 2026 or 2027. Environmental assessment finishes this year or early 2027. Last-mile transit, if it ever happens, requires its own years of design and construction outside the stadium timeline.
Governor Braun didn't promise a South Shore extension. He promised to move quickly. Those are different things.
Ben Devine's Three Claims, Fact-Checked
Claim 1: "Bills have been passed."
This one aged badly. SB 27 passed in Indiana, yes. But the Illinois bills the Bears actually need for Arlington Heights both died on June 1 without becoming law. And SB 27 itself is a financing framework, not a work plan. It still depends on a row of local taxes that haven't been adopted, in two counties, with a 2027 deadline and Porter County resisting. "Bills have been passed" describes the easy part and skips every hard part that comes after.
Claim 2: "Commission has been funded."
SB 27 creates the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority as a bonding agency. That's not a funded commission. That's an agency authorized to issue bonds. The Hammond Redevelopment Commission he might be referencing exists but has not been formally activated for this project. Authority to create something is not the same as funding it. And an agency authorized to borrow money is not an agency that has money.
Claim 3: "Public transit infrastructure is already done."
False.
The South Shore Line Monon extension serves Munster and Dyer, south of Hammond. The stadium is in Hammond, north-central, three miles from the nearest station. No funding exists for a last-mile connection. No extension to the stadium site is planned. Governor Braun explicitly refused to commit to one.
The rest of the infrastructure, the roads and parking and utilities and environmental remediation, is still on blank pages. Not designed. Not funded. Not permitted.
The Smoking Gun
Two quotes, same timeline, same question:
Kevin Warren, April 1, 2026, on stadium status: "We continue to work through it. We want to make a decision hopefully by late spring, early summer."
Governor Mike Braun, April 1, 2026, on extending South Shore Line to stadium: "Not going to make any promises other than we're going to be easy to deal with and we're going to move quickly."
The second quote demolishes the first claim. If public transit were already done, why would the governor hedge on the most obvious transit solution? Because it's not done. It's not funded. It's not promised. It's aspirational.
What Actually Gets Built vs. What Doesn't
SB 27 created a financing tool. That's real. It's important. It means Hammond can borrow about a billion dollars, on its own credit, to support the stadium.
What SB 27 did not create: roads, parking, utilities, transit connections, environmental remediation, or clear title to the parkland it would sit on. Those still exist in the "due diligence" and "working through" phase.
The Bears will eventually build those things. Or the deal doesn't happen. Or the deal happens and taxpayers fund the gap. That's still TBD.
Ben Devine is celebrating infrastructure that will be built, not infrastructure that has been built. There's a 3-mile South Shore Line and a lot of blank pages between here and 2030. Illinois folding in June didn't fill in any of those pages. It just made more people stop reading them.
Update, May 31, 2026: now the holdouts are "delusional"
Two months ago Ben told us the Hammond infrastructure was "already done." We showed you it wasn't. On May 31, with the Illinois megaprojects bill hours from dying in Springfield, his story changed.
His new line: "the Bears must either stay in downtown Chicago or they leave Illinois for Hammond." And anyone who still thinks they stay?
> "The delusional hope to keep the Bears in the city is why they are comfortable calling Hammond a bluff."
Delusional. That's the word he's got for fans who think a team that has played in Chicago since 1920 might keep playing in Chicago.
Watch what happened to the argument, though. Back in April it was about concrete: transit, roads, a chosen site. We checked the receipts and the receipts were blank. So the argument moved. It's not about what's built anymore. It's about who has the nerve. And when you stop talking about the infrastructure and start talking about who's bluffing whom, you've quietly admitted the infrastructure isn't there.
About that bluff. A bluff is exactly what it looks like from the outside when there's no site selected, no transit funded, no environmental review started, and a governor who told reporters six weeks earlier he's "not going to make any promises." We didn't start calling Hammond a bluff out of delusion. Hammond looks like a bluff because it's still a golf course next to a Superfund site and a billion dollars of permission to borrow.
Here's what gets me. The site wasn't even chosen yet. Warren himself said the decision wouldn't come until "late spring, early summer." It was the end of May. No site, no shovels, no transit plan to the door, and the people asking where the train actually goes were the delusional ones?
Call it leverage. Call it a real threat to be taken seriously. You can make that case honestly. What you don't get to do is call it "done" in April, watch that fall apart, and then call the people who noticed delusional in May.
Sources
- Indiana SB 27 (2026): Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority enabling legislation — full text and LSA fiscal note at the Indiana General Assembly - South Shore Line Monon Corridor Extension: Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, opened March 31, 2026 - Kevin Warren and Governor Mike Braun, April 1, 2026: NFL Annual League Meeting, Phoenix, AZ — via The Athletic, ESPN, WBOI/NPR - Illinois HB 910 and HB 958: Illinois General Assembly roll calls; Capitol News Illinois, Chicago Sun-Times, and WFYI/WBOI, June 1, 2026 - Bears board statement advancing Hammond, June 5, 2026; geotechnical testing at Wolf Lake Terminals, late June 2026 — NBC Chicago - INDOT FlexRoad and the Borman Expressway reconstruction; Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road concession terms (FHWA) - EPA Federated Metals Superfund site (ID 0501275), NPL listing September 6, 2023, and March 16, 2026 Proposed Plan; IDEM Voluntary Remediation Program (Lost Marsh/Barstow cap) - Indiana Code 36-10-15: Wolf Lake Memorial Park dedication and reversion clause - Ben Devine (@Chicago_NFL), March 30 and April 1, 2026: statements on X regarding Hammond infrastructure - Ben Devine (@Chicago_NFL), May 31, 2026: statements on X regarding the dying megaprojects bill and the "delusional" framing of keeping the Bears in Chicago