You’ve heard of the Chicago Bears, the Arlington Heights Bears and even the Northwestern Indiana Bears.
But have you heard of the McCook Bears?
A developer who contacted Mayor Terrance Carr a few weeks ago has proposed building the Bears’ new stadium in McCook.
The developer – whom Carr declined to identify – proposed building an 80,000-seat stadium at the southeast corner of 55th Street and East Avenue.
The site is a filled-in quarry owned by the Vulcan Materials Company, based in Birmingham, Alabama.
The developer sent Carr an artist’s rendering of the stadium that is modeled on the Dallas Cowboys’ home. Included is a “future entertainment district & parking” to the east of the proposed stadium.
Now Carr realizes this is a longshot – not unlike trailing by six points with five seconds left and the ball at your own 20-yard-line – but it does make for fun speculation.
“A developer came to us to throw the idea out there. Is it for real? Everything’s for real,” Carr said.
Phone calls to the Bears and Vulcan were not returned.
It turns out there’s more than football on the minds of developers interested in tiny McCook, which has 249 residents as of the 2020 census.
Just five days after hearing about the proposed football stadium, Carr got another call.
This time it was a developer who on Jan. 20 told him, “We heard there’s an available area to put a racino on the site.”
A racino is a casino with a horse racing track.
“So, this is definitely getting legIt is definitely exploratory. We’re going to run it up the channels and see what happens,” Carr said.
While Carr doubts the Bears will build in McCook the mayor is enthused about a racino.
“That is more interesting to me than anything,” Carr said.
And with the Illinois Racing Board suspending harness racing at Hawthorne Race Course in nearby Cicero because of financial strains, perhaps a racino in McCook is not far-fetched.
Noting the Bears are talking with Arlington Heights, Chicago and Indiana about a new stadium, Carr said “it’s a chess game at this point.”
Whether that chess game results with tiny McCook saying “checkmate” and landing one of the NFL’s founding franchises remains to be seen.
“I always say,” Carr added, “Rosemont started out with nothing and look at it today.”