Burying Lake Shore Drive Would Do More for Chicago Than Any Suburb Stadium
The Chicago Park District has a plan to sink DuSable Lake Shore Drive underground near Buckingham Fountain, connecting Grant Park directly to the lakefront. The Bears are asking for $855 million in public money to build roads for a stadium in Arlington Heights. One of these investments lasts a century.
By Dear Kevin Warren Research · 2026-03-02
In July 2025, the Chicago Park District released the first update to the Grant Park Framework Plan since 2002. It included a proposal to deck over DuSable Lake Shore Drive between Jackson Drive and Balbo Drive, creating a continuous pedestrian connection from Buckingham Fountain to Queen's Landing at the lakefront.
The same week, Kevin Warren was telling Springfield lawmakers that Illinois needed to freeze property taxes for 45 years to keep the Bears from moving to Indiana.
These two proposals exist in the same city, in the same year, asking for some of the same public money. They are not comparable investments.
What the proposal actually is
The Grant Park Framework Plan identifies two infrastructure gaps that cut the park off from the lakefront. The first is DuSable Lake Shore Drive, a six-lane highway running directly between Buckingham Fountain and the water. The second is the Metra Electric and South Shore rail trench between Monroe and Roosevelt — what the plan calls the "Forest Line" — an underground rail corridor that could be decked over to create new green space.
Right now, 20% of Grant Park's 319 acres is dedicated to roads. That is 64 acres of public parkland in the middle of Chicago currently occupied by asphalt.
The Park District's $630 million plan, pitched to state officials in Springfield in February 2026, would upgrade Soldier Field's surrounding infrastructure and expand the event capacity of the museum campus corridor. The LSD deck-over is the centerpiece.
Block Club Chicago and Streetsblog Chicago covered the proposal in detail in 2025. The concept has been discussed by urban planners and architecture critics for years. Santiago Calatrava proposed pedestrian bridges at the same location in 2001. Mayor Daley rejected them.
Millennium Park is the only comparison that matters
Chicago has done this before. The numbers are not ambiguous.
Millennium Park opened in 2004. The original budget was $150 million. Final cost: $475 million, with $173.5 million from private donors and the rest from public sources. The project converted a rail yard and surface parking lot into 24.5 acres of public park on the lakefront.
What Chicago got in return:
- $1.4 billion in annual visitor spending generated by the park (Landscape Performance Series, ASLA) - $78 million per year in tax revenue to the city - $1.4 billion in adjacent residential development between 2005 and 2015 - A 25 to 40% premium on nearby condos, up to $125 per square foot in some buildings - 55.3 million visitors to Chicago in 2024, generating $20.6 billion in total economic activity
Millennium Park cost $475 million and produces $1.4 billion per year. The Bears are asking for $855.2 million in public infrastructure subsidies to build roads for a stadium in Arlington Heights that generates no comparable return for the city of Chicago.
What the Bears are actually asking for
In October 2025, HR&A Advisors released an infrastructure cost estimate for the Bears' Arlington Heights proposal: $855.2 million in public money, not counting the stadium itself. Roads, transit connections, utilities — for a site that currently has none of those things at the scale needed for an NFL venue.
Indiana passed SB 27 on February 24, 2026, authorizing up to $1 billion in public financing through the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority. Geoffrey Propheter, a University of Colorado Denver economist who studies stadium economics, estimates the total Indiana taxpayer cost including financing at "at least $4 billion."
For context: Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the most comparable recent Midwest stadium deal, cost $1.2 billion with the public covering the majority. Indianapolis has hosted one Super Bowl since it opened in 2008.
The Bears' ask — $855 million to $1 billion in direct public infrastructure — is in the same price range as decking over Lake Shore Drive and rebuilding Grant Park's lakefront connection. The difference is where the money goes and who keeps the asset.
The debt Chicago is already carrying
The 2003 Soldier Field renovation cost $632 million. Taxpayers covered $432 million of that. As of 2022, Chicago still owed $640 million on that debt — more than the original construction cost, because of how the financing was structured.
That debt is funded by Chicago's 2% hotel room tax. In 2023 alone, the hotel tax generated $9 million less than the annual debt payment. The Illinois Sports Facilities Authority has made up the difference from reserves. Over four years, the shortfall totaled $52 million.
Chicago taxpayers are currently paying $52 million in gap funding on a 20-year-old stadium renovation while the Bears pay $7 million per year in rent and ask the state for more.
The $7 million figure is worth sitting with. Soldier Field is a 61,500-seat stadium on the lakefront in one of the five largest media markets in the country. The Dallas Cowboys pay $2 million annually to rent AT&T Stadium from the city of Arlington — a deal widely considered favorable to the team. The Bears pay more, but not much more, for a building on the most valuable public land in the Midwest.
The 80% number Warren never mentions
The Chicago Park District told Springfield officials in February 2026 that Soldier Field is their "largest non-tax revenue source." The stadium hosts hundreds of events each year. More than 80% of its revenue has nothing to do with the Chicago Bears.
The Park District projected $62.9 million in gross revenue from Soldier Field in 2026. The Bears' $7 million rent covers 11% of that. The rest comes from concerts, international soccer, civic gatherings, and major attractions.
When Beyoncé and Taylor Swift each ran Chicago tour dates in 2023, together they generated an estimated $124 million in hotel revenue alone, according to Block Club Chicago. That figure excludes restaurants, retail, and transportation. Two concert tours produced more economic activity in Chicago hotel rooms than the Bears generate in rent in 17 years.
If the Bears leave, the Park District loses 10 home dates per year. They gain 10 free Sundays. The building keeps earning.
What other cities learned from burying highways
The Boston Big Dig moved Interstate 93 underground through downtown Boston between 1991 and 2006. Final cost: $14.8 billion, versus an original projection of $2.6 billion.
What Boston got: the Rose Kennedy Greenway, 15 acres of new public park over the former highway footprint. Property values in adjacent neighborhoods increased. Downtown Boston reconnected with its waterfront.
The DuSable Lake Shore Drive proposal is far smaller in scope. It covers a short segment of roadway, not an interstate through a downtown core. The $630 million Park District estimate covers the full corridor plan. Cost overruns are possible on any infrastructure project at this scale.
But the pattern from comparable investments — Millennium Park, the Big Dig Greenway, park deck-overs in Seattle and Dallas — holds: replacing urban roads with public green space generates long-term returns that asphalt does not.
The comparison the Bears don't want made
Kevin Warren has spent 18 months arguing that Chicago needs to subsidize the Bears or lose them. The implicit claim: the Bears are irreplaceable.
The Park District's own numbers say otherwise. Soldier Field earns most of its revenue without the NFL. Chicago's hotel and tourism economy has hit record highs without a new stadium. The city has 55.3 million annual visitors. They are not coming for 10 Bears home games.
What Chicago does not have is a continuous pedestrian connection from Grant Park to the lakefront. Twenty percent of the park is roads. The main public space of the most visited urban park corridor in the Midwest is cut off from the water by a six-lane highway.
The Bears are asking Illinois to spend $855 million building roads from nowhere to a suburb. The Park District is asking for funding to remove roads from the middle of Chicago's greatest public space.
One of these proposals serves the city. The other serves a franchise.
Sources
- Chicago Park District Grant Park Framework Plan (July 2025) - Block Club Chicago: Park District Pitches $630M Soldier Field Plan (February 2026) - HR&A Advisors, Bears Arlington Heights infrastructure cost estimate (October 2025) - Landscape Performance Series, ASLA: Millennium Park economic impact data - Geoffrey Propheter, University of Colorado Denver: Indiana stadium total cost estimate - NBC Chicago: Soldier Field renovation debt reporting (2022) - Crain's Chicago Business: hotel tax shortfall reporting (2023) - Illinois Sports Facilities Authority annual reports - Places Journal / NPS: Boston Big Dig final cost documentation - Chicago Park District: Soldier Field revenue projections, Springfield testimony (February 2026)