The Chicago Bears are headed to the Hoosier State.
The team’s board of directors voted this week to move forward with a new domed stadium in Hammond, ending a five-year stadium saga and positioning one of the NFL’s oldest franchises to play its home games outside Illinois for the first time in its 106-year history. The decision delivers a marquee economic prize to Northwest Indiana and caps a months-long push by state and local leaders to lure the team across the state line.
“We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana and the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across the neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city,” Bears chairman George McCaskey said in a statement. The team said the specific site is still “to be selected,” though the Bears have spent months studying land near Wolf Lake in Hammond, including the city-owned Lost Marsh Golf Course property.
Indiana Leaders Celebrate a “Transformative” Win
State officials moved quickly to claim the victory. Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston (R-Fishers) issued a statement Friday hailing the announcement.
“I am thrilled the Bears ownership voted to develop a world-class stadium facility in Hammond,” Huston said. “This will be a transformative project for Northwest Indiana, benefiting our entire state. The Bears have been transparent and terrific partners throughout this process.”
Huston credited local officials and Gov. Mike Braun’s administration for sealing the deal.
“Local elected leadership in Northwest Indiana and their constituents have been tremendous partners in making this happen,” he said. “This is a fantastic win for Indiana, and I thank Governor Braun and his leadership team. The Bears join a long line of companies and residents choosing Indiana to invest, grow and pursue opportunity, and I look forward to many more making that choice.”
Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott, who has championed the project for months and repeatedly insisted his city’s site was “clean” and shovel-ready, had warned the Bears to act fast. “If July 1 rolls around and Hammond doesn’t know for sure, I don’t think that’s a good sign,” he said earlier in the week. The board’s vote answered him with weeks to spare.
How the Deal Works
Indiana lawmakers cleared the path with remarkable speed. Three months ago, the General Assembly authorized a new stadium authority and Gov. Braun signed the enabling legislation into law, creating the financing framework to build the dome.
Under the arrangement, Indiana would commit roughly $1 billion in public funding, with the state owning the stadium and the Bears leasing it. The team has pledged $2 billion of its own money toward construction. The Bears would keep all revenue the stadium generates and hold an option to buy the building for a nominal sum once the bonds are paid off in about 40 years.
The public share would be repaid through a slate of new and increased taxes tied largely to the stadium and tourism: a local food-and-beverage tax in Lake and Porter counties, a 12% admissions tax on stadium events in Hammond, an increase to Lake County’s hotel tax, and toll revenue. Backers say the structure leans on visitors and event-goers rather than general taxpayers, and point to early projections of billions in total investment, tens of thousands of construction jobs, and a long-term boost to local employment and tax receipts in a region still recovering from decades of steel-industry decline.
The deal is not without critics. Some Northwest Indiana residents have questioned whether the state should put public dollars and bonding capacity behind a privately owned NFL team, and the leading Hammond site sits near former industrial land that environmental regulators have flagged in the past. Supporters counter that the region badly needs the investment. “They have a lot of room because the steel mills have closed. A lot of people are hurting from that,” one retired Chicago firefighter told reporters. “It would definitely benefit the residents from not only Hammond, but Gary and so forth.”
The End of a Five-Year Search — and Illinois’ Loss
For the Bears, Hammond is the destination at the end of a long and winding road. The team submitted a bid for the former Arlington International Racecourse site in suburban Arlington Heights back in 2021 and paid $197.2 million for the 326-acre property in early 2023. But it could never resolve a property-tax fight there, and over the years the search swung from Arlington Heights to a proposed lakefront stadium in Chicago and back again, with other long-shot pitches floated from Gary, Portage, Waukegan and beyond.
Team president and CEO Kevin Warren expanded the search to Northwest Indiana in December, frustrated by the stalemate over Arlington Heights property taxes. Indiana pounced. Illinois lawmakers, by contrast, ran out of time: a last-minute bill that would have let a Cook County municipality create its own stadium financing authority passed the Illinois Senate at 3:39 a.m. on the final night of the session, but the House adjourned roughly 45 minutes later without taking it up. Days later, the Bears’ board made Indiana official.
For Hammond and the wider Calumet Region, the vote turns years of speculation into a generational opportunity — a domed NFL stadium, the construction boom that comes with it, and a national spotlight on Northwest Indiana. As Huston put it, state leaders are betting the Bears are just the beginning.
