Many kudos to the organizations and groups that came out in opposition to a Bears stadium on the lakefront (“Groups join forces to oppose Bears stadium,” Sept 19).
I hope Mayor Brandon Johnson takes heed. It takes a lot of chutzpah on the part of the Bears to decide that they can take over the lakefront, which is to remain “forever open, clear and free” and to request (demand?) billions of taxpayer money to boot. They must have poor memories (or just want to ignore) that “Star Wars” creator George Lucas was denied permission to use the lakefront for his museum, even though it would have been paid for with his own money and not create as much of a footprint on the lakefront as the Bears stadium would.
One of the Bears’ arguments is that the lakefront stadium would create more than 43,000 construction jobs and more than 4,000 permanent jobs, as though this is a make-work project. However, if the stadium were built elsewhere, wouldn’t those job numbers be more or less about the same? Moreover, they want to tear down Soldier Field, a monument to our veterans. That’s a nice kick in the teeth.
I just don’t understand how they thought it could go over easily. Even if they had a Super Bowl team, it would be a hard sell. But then, when politicians get involved, you never know what could happen.
— Mario Caruso, Chicago
A poor cost-benefit ratio
Seventeen regular-season games a year at a cost of $5.3 billion for a new Bears stadium on public lakefront land? Three cheers for the groups joining forces to oppose this outrageous idea.
— Diane Ciral, Chicago
A way to distract the fans
The reason the Bears and White Sox are looking at sites with great views of the lakefront and downtown for their new stadiums is that nobody attending their games wants to look at what the teams are doing on the field.
— Daniel Morgenthaler, Chicago
Arlington Heights site
For decades to come, taxpayers will still be paying for the ugly addition to Soldier Field to increase the profits of the privately owned Bears organization. With incomparable gall and while maintaining a straight face, their management is proposing that taxpayers spend billions of dollars to help them build a new domed stadium on our precious lakefront and level Soldier Field so there is parking space for their new stadium.
The Bears paid $200 million for Arlington Park and are spending millions more to tear down the grandstand and related structures. When they didn’t get all the tax breaks they were demanding in Arlington Heights, they came up with this impossible alternative to leverage their case. Chicago hotels, taxi drivers, restaurants, casino and stores would benefit from out-of-state NFL fans, even if the new stadium is built in Arlington Heights.
Concerts alone could not support an empty Soldier Field. About 3 miles away is the University of Illinois at Chicago, which incredibly is a NCAA Division I school competing in many sports but has no football team. Why? Building a stadium would cost billions of dollars. If the city of Chicago allowed UIC to use Soldier Field for free, the city would take in money from visiting Division 1 teams and their huge number of fans. This would be in addition to the NFL fan income.
Arlington Heights and Chicago are huge winners, and the Bears could go public if they don’t have the cash they need to build their empire.
— Burt Siegal, Skokie
Reappraisal is called for
Now that the structures have been removed from the shuttered, single-use Arlington Park race track, that property is probably five or 10 times more valuable now than when it was purchased. Has the Cook County assessor’s office adjusted its appraisal of this property accordingly?
— Al White, Hoffman Estates
Drawing more CTA riders
I completely agree with Laura Washington’s column on the head of the CTA, Dorval Carter Jr. (“Why is Dorval Carter Jr. still head of the CTA?” Sept. 25). To improve CTA ridership, Chicago needs to maximize the reasons individuals ride public transportation while minimizing the reasons individuals avoid public transportation.
Below is an easy 10-point plan that the CTA could implement to improve ridership:
- Offer free Wi-Fi on all train lines to allow commuters to easily mutlitask/work on commutes.
- Consider adding “quiet cars” for commuters and “women-only” cars.
- Increase the ticket cost to fund system upgrades, while assuring riders it is less than that of an Uber or driving.
- Add a conductor to all “L” trains to patrol cars and enforce CTA rules.
- Have police or security empowered to enforce rules at each stop.
- Charge riders either based on origin and destination or by time on the train to discourage using the CTA as a shelter, scam target or gambling front.
- Enforce the rules against sleeping, panhandling, gambling and consumption of alcohol, drugs, tobacco and marijuana on the CTA.
- Enforce the rules against eating and drinking on the CTA for the sake of cleanliness.
- Sanitize the interiors of buses and trains daily and make efforts to prevent infestations such as bedbugs.
- Improve system technology to reflect accurate real-time schedules and plan the system to have buses ready to meet trains at common transfer points.
Taking these steps would bring the CTA operations to a world-class experience, and ridership should effectively resume.
— Ryan Wheeler, Chicago
Coffee syrup memories
I thoroughly enjoyed Christopher Borrelli’s article on Sept. 18 about Dunkin Donuts introducing Coffee Milk to its menu (“Is introducing Rhode Island coffee milk good thing for Dunkin’?”). It brought back memories as a kid of my visiting my grandparents and aunts in Newport, Rhode Island, every summer. It was a special treat to find the Autocrat coffee syrup bottle in the cabinet and add it to my milk and pretend to be a grownup drinking coffee. My siblings and I loved it, and my family would always drive back to Chicago with bottles stashed in the car. It was a New England anomaly.
As my own kids got older and we continued the visits to my mom’s hometown of Newport, the fourth generation got to discover the great taste of coffee milk and bringing bottles of Autocrat home along with the sand and seashells.
So thanks to Borrelli for the trip down memory lane and the tip about Dunkin’ Donuts. I’ll be in Newport this week to visit family, and I just may bring back a bottle or two!
— Joan Pinter Passanante, Gurnee
Thorough look at reform
I want to compliment Tribune reporter Madeline Buckley for a very well-written and informative article in the Sept. 15 Tribune (“State bail reform has impact in first year”). She wrote a very thorough article explaining the changes to the state’s bail reform system. I learned more from her article than from previous write-ups.
— Stephen Brescia, Tinley Park
We are all one family
Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso’s op-ed “My wife and I witnessed the wedding of the perfect couple” (Sept. 21) about a same-sex wedding is not only a beautiful opinion piece but also is brilliant at expressing so clearly that under God, we are all created equal.
Our human race has many differences in race, language, religion and nationality, etc. But bottom line, as our human race evolves, we understand better and better that we are all created by the one God as one family and that we make a better human race when we live as family trying to help each other, work together, accept each other with all our differences and forgive each other for our imperfections. Perhaps, most important, is when we try to understand each other so that we can learn from each other and make a better world because, under God, we are indeed all created equal, as one family.
— Arthur J. Murphy, Chicago
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