Is New Proposal for a Domed Soldier Field Full of Hot Air?

By Don DeBat

Yet another beauty makeover for Soldier Field is on an architect’s drawing board as a follow-up to the Chicago Bears planned exodus to Arlington Heights or Indiana.

Soldier Field would get a translucent, domed roof, 20,000 new skybox seats, and a surrounding entertainment district under an architect’s new pipe-dream proposal.

Now that the Chicago Bears posted a rare winning season in 2025, fans have visions of a Super Bowl dancing in their heads. So, why not run the jock strap up the goal post?

The disloyal, profit-seeking Bears, with an exciting No.1 drafted quarterback and a potential Super Bowl contending team, want to dump the Windy City, and are planning to become real estate developers with a move to the suburbs or out of state. Building a new stadium outside of Chicago likely would cost $3-billion in today’s dollars.

The Bears already paid nearly $200 million to buy the former Arlington International Racecourse, and demolished the grandstand there to create a 326-acre site that’s ready for construction.

Wonder why Sen. Bernie Sanders and Texas Rep. Greg Casar recently introduced the “The Home Team Act” in the U.S. Congress? The act would require a sports-team owner to announced that it wants to relocate a year prior to moving. That one-year notice would give the community, not-for-profits or private investors a chance to buy the team at “fair market value” before the owners move it.  

The latest Soldier Field dome idea is similar to a $2-billion plan to put a lid on the stadium designed under former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2022, which went nowhere.

The new translucent-dome plan, floated by Chicago architect Edward Peck, would create an entertainment complex by building a concrete and steel deck over adjacent rail lines and DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

The proposal adds new suites and fan amenities “to challenge the assumption that Soldier Field is no longer viable,” said Peck, the managing director of Edward Peck Design. Peck was engaged to create the concept by a Bears fan, or developer, who asked to remain anonymous.

The Chicago Bears, the city and the Park District, which owns the stadium, are not involved with the Peck proposal.                                                                                                                                                     The Soldier Field site, next to the Museum Campus, the Loop and McCormick Place Convention Center, would likely generate significantly greater revenue for the city and state than the suburban Arlington Heights site, or Indiana, said Peck, whose firm has been involved in numerous large projects, including NFL stadiums and Olympic venues.

The entertainment district concept, built on a deck west of Soldier Field, echoes that of Landmark Development’s “One Central Plan,” which proposed a mixed-use development built over the rails west of the stadium. State lawmakers are considering tax incentives for a scaled-down version of that proposal, separate from the stadium debate.

Peck estimated his plan would be 35% more cost-effective than building a new stadium, which would help pay for the estimated $700 million cost of the 10-acre entertainment district deck.

The Home Front column wonders what would the late Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Mike Royko—and his alter-ego Slats Grobnik—say about this big-money game of political football?

For a living die-hard Bear’s fan assessment, we interviewed our own Slats Grobnik—Mr. Zak, Inside Publication’s go-to blue-collar source for sports stadiums, casinos and urban planning.

Insight from Mr. Zak

“The Bears should stay put,” Mr. Zak declared. “If they move, and they probably will, it’s all about money, not Bears’ NFL tradition, or love of their loyal fans.”

Mr. Zak says adding a translucent dome and 20,000 additional revenue-producing roof-top skybox seats may only cost an estimated $500 million to $600 million.

Those improvements likely would bring an elusive Super Bowl to Chicago in a few years. Fans hope the Bears will keep spending tens of millions of dollars to bring in high-quality players so their team might actually get to play in the Super Bowl. So, this writer, also a Bears fan, likes Peck’s translucent-dome plan.

After the last “remuddle” of Soldier Field, architecture critics said the silvery, space-age design looked like a flying saucer landed on top of the landmark, 100,000-seat stadium originally built in 1924.

A landmark lost

After its remuddling, Soldier Field lost landmark status and was booted off the National Register of Historic Places. Not only is the “renovated” stadium ugly, it is flawed by today’s stadium standards. It only seats 56,000 fans, and doesn’t have the required all-weather dome.

However, over the years, this writer oddly has grown to accept the remodeled Soldier Field like a blue-collar Slats-Grobnik fan loves the gap between his wife’s front teeth, the hairy mole on her cheek, or the bump on her ethnic nose.   

My pre-renovation love affair with Soldier Field dates back to 1959, while attending the city high school football championship game between Lane Tech and Fenwick, a Catholic League powerhouse. Lane, my alma mater, won 19-0 in the snow because of a grinding running game.

Earlier in the Public League semi-finals, Lane Tech defeated Chicago Vocational High School on statistics after a 6-6 tie. CVS was led by future Bear’s star and NFL Hall of Famer Dick Butkas.

Softball World Series

Another forever-memory moment of mine was the 1975 Windy City 16-inch softball World Series played on a beautifully manicured diamond with bleachers laid out at the north end of the old Soldier Field.

“The South Side’s ERV Strikers, led by pitcher Mike Tallo and hot-hitting John Kelleher, edged the suburban Big Banjo Bruins 8-7, before 25,000 cheering softball fans,” recalled Tom Bonen, who played RF for the Strikers. The Bruins upset the favored Bobcats 15-13 in the semi-final game.

As nightside Sports Copy Desk Editor and softball columnist at the Chicago Daily News, I helped Mike Royko and TV broadcasters Tim Weigel and Marty Robinson identify players while the team did color commentary on the game broadcast by WTTW (Channel 11), and viewed by more than 100,000 softball-loving Chicagoans.

The Soldier Field location was approved by Chicago Park District czar, Ed Kelly, a Chicago 16-Inch Softball Hall of Fame inductee, and a star on the famed Kool Vent Awnings Windy City championship teams in the early 1950s.

Casino proposal ignored

Today, Mr. Zak likes the idea of building an entertainment mecca west of a domed Soldier Field on air rights over the DuSable Outer Drive and Metra railroad tracks. Earlier, Mr. Zak’s brilliant proposal to locate the new Chicago Casino in McCormick Place No. 1, was ignored by Mayor Lightfoot.

That was another big mistake by former mayor, said Mr. Zak. During the Covid epidemic the city had already pumped $15 million into the old McCormick Place building for new (casino-compatible) electrical and other upgrades in an emergency plan to use the facility as a hospital.

According to Mr. Zak, Mayor Lightfoot took a $40-milllion donation from Bally, and the casino now is under construction at Chicago Avenue and Halsted St. on the edge of Goose Island—one of the most congested intersections in Chicago.

“Whatever happened to the $40 million?” asks Mr. Zak.

For more housing news, visit www.dondebat.biz. Don DeBat is co-author of “Escaping Condo Jail,” the ultimate survival guide for condominium living. Visit www.escapingcondojail.com.