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The Move to Arlington Heights - Official Thread


beardown3231

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Fun fact: the Arlington Park racecourse was once owned by Gulf+Western, which also once owned Paramount Pictures, now a sister company to the NFL's oldest TV partner, CBS.

Paramount, through its former theater division, was the founding owners of Chicago CBS outlet WBBM-TV, founded was WBKB-TV.

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7 hours ago, pf9 said:

Fun fact: the Arlington Park racecourse was once owned by Gulf+Western, which also once owned Paramount Pictures, now a sister company to the NFL's oldest TV partner, CBS.

Paramount, through its former theater division, was the founding owners of Chicago CBS outlet WBBM-TV, founded was WBKB-TV.

FUN

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  • 2 weeks later...
22 hours ago, dll2000 said:

Cook County moving quick on giant tax increase before Arlington was even demolished was so stupid. 

Now we may be years from breaking ground.  

So pay 4.3 million in taxes to the schools for the vacant years. Not a big deal and would go to a good cause. What's the hangup here?

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14 hours ago, dafreak said:

So pay 4.3 million in taxes to the schools for the vacant years. Not a big deal and would go to a good cause. What's the hangup here?

The hang up is there is no way Bears are agreeing to pay full rates and there is no way they are going to be captive to a taxing body that can essentially name any number they want whenever they want.   They want certainty and predictability in property tax cost.    

Bears want an agreement in place before they invest billions of dollars in building on it and it makes the ability to leave much harder.   They don't want a huge variable in cost sitting out there.  And they don't want to be black mailed in future (from their perspective).   

For example Florida can fight with Disney because Disney can't leave now or it would be extremely costly.   Moving all park equipment and finding other suitable land and climate is too prohibitive.   They are captive.   

If Disney was just a movie studio or a tech company, FL govt. wouldn't do that.   They would bend the knee or leave them alone.  

Amazon or Google or any huge business does same when they move into an area.   They want to know what the offer is.  They use different cities and states to compete against each other   Just way it works, because other taxes and ancillary effects that come in from jobs makes it worth it.    We don't get same deals when we enter a place.   We pay what they tell us we have to pay.   

But we have same out.  We sell and move when it gets to be too much (if it makes sense for us - given job, family, roots, etc.)

If you tax or bother IBM or whoever too much where they are at, they leave when it hits a tipping point or someone somewhere else offers them a deal that makes it worth it for them to leave.

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We have added months,  probably years, to getting stadium done because Cook county jacked that assessment up immediately and sent a big warning flare across bow of Bears.

That is time that land sits there being unproductive.     

They really jumped gun.   Such a small thing.   Now they have to play politics and get proposals from other cities and honestly probably on down low from other states as well.  

Remember they said Arlington was there place.  They were all in on Arlington until they jacked taxes.   Now we are in indefinite holding pattern.  

Kevin Warren has a fiduciary duty to Bears to look elsewhere now.   I don't blame him.  

It makes me sad though.  

I still think it ends up happening in Arlington.   But it is going to take longer as Bears are going to insist on a deal in place before they move forward and a deal could take a long time to hammer out.

If there was trust they would keep moving forward, but I think they lost trust.  

 

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16 hours ago, dafreak said:

So pay 4.3 million in taxes to the schools for the vacant years. Not a big deal and would go to a good cause. What's the hangup here?

its the principal. Imagine you buy a house and the taxes are 3k - 2.7k are due to the building and .3k because of the lot. Then you take the house down and all of a sudden the city says the taxes are worth $10k and the reason is "because we said so." That's the message AH is sending to the Bears, and the team is fighting it.

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11 minutes ago, HuskieBear said:

its the principal. Imagine you buy a house and the taxes are 3k - 2.7k are due to the building and .3k because of the lot. Then you take the house down and all of a sudden the city says the taxes are worth $10k and the reason is "because we said so." That's the message AH is sending to the Bears, and the team is fighting it.

In fairness it was reassessed after they bought it.  So they reassessed it at contract price.

But they really didn't think that move through.  And now that led to where we are now.

It is entirely possible that this was not a calculated move by assessor.   But was just stupidity and lack of foresight at ramifications.  

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34 minutes ago, dll2000 said:

In fairness it was reassessed after they bought it.  So they reassessed it at contract price.

But they really didn't think that move through.  And now that led to where we are now.

It is entirely possible that this was not a calculated move by assessor.   But was just stupidity and lack of foresight at ramifications.  

that's the point. they reassessed it on what it's going to be, not what it currently is. if you bought a cheap, empty lot and planned to build a house in 3 years but the city started taxing you on your future plans, i bet you wouldn't like that

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