Board Raises Bears' Tax Assessment For Arlington Property By $30M

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL — If the Chicago Bears decide to move forward with building a stadium at the former Arlington Park racetrack, the team will be paying more taxes on the property than it had hoped. The Cook County Board of Review ruled earlier this week that the 326-acre site is worth $125 million, which is $30 million more than the team's original assessment of the property ($95 million) and $65 million over what the Bears recently said Arlington is worth ($60 million).

"Our decision for the Bears' stadium site is about fairness — fairness to the Bears and fairness to Arlington Heights taxing bodies," Cook County Board of Review Commissioner George Cardenas, who represents Arlington Heights and Palatine Township, said in a statement.

At a tax hearing in front of the board last month, the football team and three Arlington Heights area school districts located nearby were $100 million apart in their assessments of the property's value. The three school districts — Community Consolidated School District 15 (based in Palatine), High School District 211 (based in Palatine), and High School District 214 (based in Arlington Heights) — valued the property at $160 million, the same appraisal they had in December.

"We believe that the Bears paid for a unique property with an eye toward future profit potential, which should not be captured in the current Assessor valuation," Cardenas said. "BOR has attempted to make the parcel uniform with a land price per square foot value that is similar to land parcels with similar uses and believes that the current commercial valuation is not captured by the Bears’ sales price and assessing the Bears at the sales price would be an overvaluation."

According to Cardenas, a class change to vacant land "would not be appropriate" for the 2023 tax year due to commercial improvements remaining on the property into December. The Bears were given a partial 40 percent occupancy factor for Arlington that is good for one year only.

[The number would be] 98 percent if the value of the site is in the land, so valuations of existing structures aren’t really affecting the value," Cardenas said.

The Bears purchased the 309-acre property for $196 million in February 2023. The Cook County Assessor assessed its 2023 fair market value at $192 million in June of last year.

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