The Renovation Controversy: 2000s

After the Gary gambit and a decade of threats, Chicago finally blinked. In 2000, Mayor Daley, the Chicago Park District, and the Bears announced a $632 million renovation of Soldier Field. The Bears...

By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-01-21

Section 1: The Promise of Renovation

The pitch was simple: keep the historic colonnades, update everything else. Modern amenities. Better sightlines. Club seats and luxury boxes. The Bears would stay in Chicago. The lakefront stadium would remain standing.

What nobody mentioned was that "update everything else" meant gutting the entire interior.

Section 2: The Architects' Vision

The design came from Wood + Zapata, a Boston firm, partnered with Chicago's Lohan Caprile Goettsch. Their plan preserved the 1924 colonnades—all 100 Doric columns—while inserting a modern bowl inside.

The new structure would be steel and glass. Angular. Contemporary. It would rise above the historic limestone walls like... well, like nothing Chicago had seen before.

The architects called it a "dialogue between old and new." Carlos Zapata said the design honored history while giving Chicago a modern stadium. The old limestone would contrast with the new glass and steel.

Architecture has a word for this approach: juxtaposition. Chicago came up with several others.

Section 3: Construction Begins

The Bears played their last game in the old Soldier Field on January 19, 2002—a playoff loss to the Eagles, 33-19. The demolition crews moved in that spring.

What happened next shocked even people who'd followed the renovation debates. The entire interior came down. Every seat. Every concourse. The press box. The support structures. Workers stripped the stadium to its colonnades and poured a new foundation.

The Bears spent 2002 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, 135 miles south. They went 4-12 that year, their worst record since 1999. Some fans joked the renovation was contagious.

Back in Chicago, the new bowl took shape. Steel beams rose above the limestone. Glass panels caught the lakefront light. The structure looked nothing like any stadium in professional sports.

Section 4: The Spaceship Lands

Soldier Field reopened on September 29, 2003. The Bears beat the Green Bay Packers 38-23. The crowd was 61,500—barely half of what the old stadium once held.

The reaction was immediate. And brutal.

"Spaceship" was the polite term. The new bowl, perched atop the historic colonnades, looked like alien architecture had landed on a Roman ruin. The angles didn't match. The materials clashed. The scale felt wrong.

Blair Kamin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic at the Chicago Tribune, called it the "Eyesore on the Lake Shore." Stanley Tigerman, one of Chicago's most respected architects, called the renovation "a fiasco." Lynn Becker, writing in the Chicago Reader, described it as "Neo-Fascist lite."

The insults piled up: "Monstrosity on the Midway." "Mistake by the Lake." "The UFO that ate Soldier Field."

Section 5: The Fan Reaction

Bears fans split into camps. Some loved the new amenities—wider seats, better concessions, actual bathrooms instead of troughs. The sightlines improved. The video boards worked. You could see the field from every seat.

Others couldn't get past what was lost. The old Soldier Field held over 66,000 for Bears games and could expand to 100,000 for special events. The new version seated 61,500, making it the smallest stadium in the NFL.

Longtime season ticket holders complained about losing seats in the renovation lottery. The club seats and luxury boxes ate capacity that used to go to regular fans. The waiting list for season tickets got longer.

And the colonnades—the whole point of preserving them—now looked stranded. They framed a building that didn't belong to them. Holabird & Roche designed those columns to wrap around a classical bowl. Now they wrapped around a glass cocoon that pretended they weren't there.

Section 6: The major Falls

On February 17, 2006, the National Park Service made it official: Soldier Field was no longer a National Historic Landmark.

The decision had been expected since the renovation began. The Park Service warned in 2003 that the project threatened the designation. Now they followed through.

"The overall integrity of the historic design and structure has been destroyed," the Park Service wrote. The new bowl was "incompatible in material, scale, and design" with the historic colonnades.

Soldier Field became the first National Historic Landmark to lose its status due to alteration by its owners. The stadium that once shared designation with the Alamo and Gettysburg was now just another building.

The colonnades kept their National Register listing—a lower tier of protection. But the major status, earned in 1987, was gone after eighteen years. The preservation groups who sued in 2001 had been right all along.

Section 7: What $632 Million Bought

So what did $632 million actually buy? Climate-controlled luxury boxes. A club level where you can watch the game indoors. Better accessibility. Video boards that work. Heating coils under the field so it doesn't freeze solid in December.

It also gave Chicago the smallest capacity in the NFL, a lost major, and an architectural joke that became national shorthand for renovation gone wrong.

The design won some defenders. Zapata still calls it one of his firm's proudest achievements. A few architecture critics appreciated the boldness, even if the execution made them wince. And sure, the glass catches sunset light nicely over Lake Michigan. From certain angles, anyway.

But drive south on Lake Shore Drive today. Look at the stadium rising above the colonnades. The disconnect hits you every time. Two buildings that don't belong together, forced into the same footprint.

Section 8: Here We Go Again

Twenty years later, the Bears are threatening to leave again. Arlington Heights first, now back to the lakefront with a domed stadium proposal. Turns out $632 million wasn't enough. The "modern" amenities from 2003 are already outdated. The smallest stadium in the NFL doesn't bring in enough money.

The colonnades are still standing. They'll probably outlast whatever comes next—the dome, the relocation, the next stadium deal. Holabird & Roche built them to last.

The spaceship? That's less certain.

Sources

- Chicago Tribune archives, 2000-2006 - National Park Service major documentation - National Register of Historic Places records - Chicago Reader architecture criticism archives - Pro Football Reference (Bears records 2001-2003) - Wood + Zapata project documentation - Illinois Supreme Court records (Friends of the Parks v. Chicago Park District, 2003)