Why It Won't Be Indiana
Everyone keeps saying it's Hammond now. It isn't. Indiana passed a financing law. It did not pass a site, a permit, a cleanup plan, a traffic plan, a lease, a bond market, a federal review, or an NFL relocation vote.
By Dear Kevin Warren · 2026-06-03
We've heard it for six months now, louder every week: the Bears are going to Hammond. Indiana passed a law. Sports radio already moved the team across the state line. After Illinois let its stadium bills die on June 1, the chorus got deafening.
They're not going because Indiana passed the easy part. The hard parts are still sitting there: federal permits, parkland restrictions, cleanup liability, local tax votes, Hammond's credit risk, traffic, transit, private toll roads, and the NFL's relocation process.
None of that has been solved. Most of it has not even started.
Indiana passed a financing law. It did not pass a site, a permit, a cleanup plan, a traffic plan, a lease, a bond market, a federal review, or an NFL relocation vote.
Here is what still has to happen before anyone plays football in Hammond.
| The door | Status, June 2026 | |----------|-------------------| | State parkland reversion clause repealed (IC 36-10-15) | Not introduced | | Federal environmental review (§404 / NEPA) | Not started; ~4.5-year average | | Cleanup-liability shield for digging the cap | None on record | | Local taxes adopted, including Porter County | Porter resisting | | Bears sign a 35-year lease (required before bonds can price) | Unsigned | | NFL owners approve the move, 24 of 32 | Not sought |
That is the case. Not vibes. Gates.
The site is not shovel-ready
The proposed site is the Lost Marsh and Wolf Lake area of Hammond. It is not an empty field waiting for a stadium. It is the former Barstow steel-mill dump: about 3.5 million cubic yards of slag and fly ash, capped years ago under Indiana's voluntary cleanup program.
Capped, not removed.
The material is still down there, under a lid of biosolids and dredge spoil. Across the fence is BP Whiting, the largest oil refinery in the Midwest. In 2023, BP paid a $40 million federal penalty for Clean Air Act violations there, the largest such penalty ever levied on a single stationary source. In January 2024, tank leaks pushed a benzene and hydrogen-sulfide odor across the region. That February, a power failure forced an evacuation and left the flare stacks burning around the clock.
And right next door sits the Federated Metals Superfund site, lead and arsenic in the soil, added to the EPA's National Priorities List in September 2023. The stadium parcel falls in the zone where the EPA has not chosen a cleanup plan yet.
Dig the foundations and the stadium risk becomes the cleanup risk. Breach the cap, re-expose the material, and the question is no longer whether Indiana can pass a law. It is who owns the federal liability after the sales deck meets the ground.
That is not a shovel-ready stadium site. It is a capped industrial parcel beside an active refinery and an EPA Superfund site, with cleanup questions that become stadium questions the moment foundations go into the ground. Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said it plainer than we can.
My dead grandmother would have to come back to life for the Bears to go to Indiana. It is a toxic site.
Maria Pappas, Cook County Treasurer
$40M — largest Clean Air Act penalty ever paid by a single source, the refinery next to the site
The access problem is still blank
The Hammond pitch keeps leaning on distance: 18 miles from Soldier Field, closer than Arlington Heights, right across the line.
Distance is not access.
As of June 2026, there is no published traffic study, no road-widening plan, and no transit plan tying the Lost Marsh site to a station. The Borman Expressway, I-80/94, already carries more than 200,000 vehicles a day. It is Indiana's busiest interstate corridor. INDOT's FlexRoad project is not adding lanes because there is limited right-of-way. It is an operations fix: ramp metering, dynamic shoulders, cameras, signs. It is also under construction from 2026 to 2029.
The most direct Chicago route runs through two privately leased toll roads in series: the Chicago Skyway, then the Indiana Toll Road. Cline Avenue brings another private toll bridge into the mix. No single public agency can order game-day capacity, toll relief, police staging, shuttle routing, or Chicago-side traffic changes by itself.
And rail is still a logo, not a plan. The South Shore Line's new $943 million Monon Corridor extension runs to Munster and Dyer. That is away from Wolf Lake. There is no stadium station, no spur, and no published shuttle plan from rail to 129th and Calumet.
200K+ — vehicles per day on the Borman Expressway, Indiana's busiest interstate corridor; Hammond's stadium traffic study has not surfaced
The federal clock does not fit 2030
The average federal environmental impact statement takes about four and a half years to complete. Hammond's review has not started. It has not been scoped. The Bears talk about opening in 2030.
At average speed, the federal review alone runs out the clock before a shovel moves. That is before remediation. Before roads. Before the first steel beam.
4.5 yrs — average federal environmental impact statement; Hammond's has not begun
The money is not locked
You've heard "Indiana is putting up a billion dollars" and "it's state-backed, no risk to anybody." Read the actual fiscal note and both claims fall apart.
The construction bonds are general-obligation debt of the City of Hammond, backed by Hammond's own taxpayers, not the state of Indiana. The taxes meant to repay them mostly do not exist yet, because each one has to be adopted locally. Porter County is already balking.
Why would Porter tax its own restaurants for a stadium 20 miles away that brings it nothing? Commissioner Jim Biggs said Hammond and the state can offer the Bears "all the subsidies that they think their taxpayers can afford."
Translation: not Porter's bill.
If Porter walks, the gap rolls onto Hammond's general credit.
And the real number is not a billion. Geoffrey Propheter, a public-finance economist who ran the math on the full subsidy structure, puts the realistic public cost north of $4 billion. For that, Hammond gets a stadium it cannot tax, owned publicly so it pays zero property tax forever, that the Bears would lease for a dollar while keeping the revenue. Hammond also loses Lost Marsh golf course and its new clubhouse, loses Wolf Lake recreation, and takes on the cleanup liability.
A permissive county tax is not money in the bank. It is a hope with a fiscal note attached.
$4B — realistic public cost of the Hammond deal, against the ~$1B talking point
The parkland gate is separate
Wolf Lake Memorial Park is dedicated public parkland under Indiana law. Converting it to a stadium can trigger a clause that lets the legislature claw the land back from Hammond without paying a cent.
So before the stadium deal gets to the federal gates, Indiana has to deal with its own state gate. The legislature has to undo or navigate its own park dedication. None of that has been introduced. None of it is signed.
A law is not a kickoff. It is the starting line.
We've seen this movie
Kevin Warren knows this script because he wrote a version of it. As a Vikings executive, he cycled through sites, floated Los Angeles, dangled suburban Arden Hills, and walked away with $498 million in public money for a downtown Minneapolis stadium. Arden Hills was the leverage. Minneapolis was always the plan.
He's running it again. Lakefront, then Arlington Heights, then "our future home" in Arlington Heights, then, 100 days later, "we need to expand our search, including Northwest Indiana." Indiana showed up in the conversation at the precise moment Illinois legislators started asking hard questions.
In the same letter where he raised Indiana, Warren wrote, "This is not about leverage." When a negotiator volunteers that something is not leverage, it is leverage.
The June collapse in Springfield did not change the math. It turned up the volume. The Bears still have not signed anything in Indiana. Their headquarters still sit in Lake Forest, Illinois. Their lease still runs at Soldier Field through 2033.
What looks like a march to Hammond is the oldest play in the stadium-subsidy book: make the other side believe you will walk, so they pay you to stay.
What Hammond really means
This is not about running down Hammond. Hammond is a working city with a real history. The problem is the proposed site and the deal built around it.
A stadium plan that depends on capped industrial land, federal environmental review, uncertain county taxes, private toll-road access, no direct transit, parkland restrictions, and a 2030 opening date is not a plan. It is a pressure campaign with a rendering attached.
The Bears are one of two NFL franchises still owned by their founding family. One family, one city, 106 years, on a lakefront that belongs to the public. That is not a logo you repackage in another state. It is the asset.
No NFL team has ever voluntarily walked away from a top-five market. The Bears are not going to be the first so they can pour concrete beside a Superfund site, with money Hammond does not have, through an access plan nobody has published, on a timeline the federal government will not allow.
Indiana passed a law. Chicago has the Bears. Those are not the same thing, and they are not about to become it.
Sources: Indiana SB 27 and LSA fiscal note (Indiana General Assembly); EPA Federated Metals Superfund site (ID 0501275, NPL Sept. 6, 2023) and EPA/DOJ BP Whiting Clean Air Act settlement (2023); WFYI and Environmental Law & Policy Center on the 2024 Whiting leaks; Indiana Code 36-10-15 (Wolf Lake park dedication); U.S. Army Corps / NEPA process; INDOT FlexRoad materials, FHWA Indiana Toll Road case study, Chicago Skyway concession materials, Cline Avenue / SR-912 toll bridge materials, and WBEZ on the South Shore Line Monon Corridor extension; Council on Environmental Quality EIS Timeline Report (2025); NWI Times (Porter County); Geoffrey Propheter public-finance analysis of SB 27; Maria Pappas, Cook County Treasurer; Chicago Sun-Times and WFYI on the June 1, 2026 Illinois adjournment. Deep dives: The Infrastructure Myth, What Indiana's Bears Bill Actually Costs, Indiana Taxpayers: Read the Fine Print, and Kevin Warren's Track Record.
Update — July 13, 2026
Two days after this article was published on June 3, the Bears' board of directors voted to "advance our stadium development project in Hammond." A 74-word joint statement from McCaskey and Warren. It was the most formal step the Bears have taken toward Indiana.
What has not changed: no lease is signed, no environmental review has begun, no traffic study has surfaced, no permits have been filed, and the NFL has not been asked for a relocation vote. The gates this article identified remain exactly where they were on June 3.
Since then, two things have reinforced the thesis:
Porter County said no. Commissioner Jim Biggs is on record opposing the 1% food-and-beverage tax that the Hammond financing package depends on. Without Porter County participation, the funding gap grows — and Braun's claim that the deal "looks good" has to be read against the math that local tax adoption is not optional.
Braun's "red zone" came with a caveat. On July 8, Braun told a Northwest Indiana business audience the Hammond bid is "in the red zone" and has "moved a long distance in a short time." Then he added the part that matters: "Until you ink it, it's not done." He described the remaining path as Bears due diligence needed "to close it." The same Tribune report noted Porter County pushback.
Meanwhile, Pritzker told reporters on June 26 that Indiana is "not a whole heck of a lot closer than we are." The Bears are now constructing their own Illinois bill, merging HB 910 and HB 958 into a single compromise — while publicly maintaining their Hammond focus.
Two tracks. Neither landed. The gates still stand.
Update — July 15, 2026
The most significant development since the July 13 update is not a political move. It is arithmetic.
The math does not work. On July 14, the Chicago Tribune published the first independent, named-economist analysis of Indiana's Hammond stadium financing. Geoffrey Propheter (University of Colorado Denver) and Deborah Carroll (University of Illinois Chicago) both concluded that even under best-case revenue assumptions, the tax streams authorized under SB 27 fall $5-7 million per year short of the $60-62M annual debt service on a $1 billion, 30-year bond. Propheter: "Few lawmakers ever ask what's behind the curtain." Carroll: "If any of those assumptions fail to materialize, the reality can drastically change the financial scenario."
This is not a blogger's back-of-the-envelope. This is two academic economists independently arriving at the same number using the same legislation the Indiana General Assembly passed. SB 27 assumed its tax streams would cover the bonds. They do not.
Porter County hardened. Commissioner Jim Biggs told the Tribune residents answer "almost 100% — not no, but, hell no" to the food-and-beverage tax. Council President Andy Vásquez blamed his primary defeat on his stadium tax support. Without Porter County's revenue, the $5-7M gap becomes a $10M+ gap.
A GOP leader says it is 50-50. State Sen. Sue Rezin (deputy minority leader) told Shaw Local on July 14 she gives the Bears a "50-50 chance" of staying. If a Republican Senate leader in Illinois treats the Hammond threat as a coin flip, it has not closed the deal the way the June headlines suggested.
None of the gates this article identified — NEPA, permits, cleanup, traffic, transit, NFL relocation — have been cleared. Now we can add one more: the financing does not add up, and the people who would have to pay the difference are already saying no.