CHICAGO — The Arlington Heights Village Board on Monday night signed off on an agreement that establishes what the Chicago Bears would pay in property taxes, a significant step that clears the way for a potential new stadium in the northwest suburb, even though team officials say they remain focused on seeking a new arena in Chicago.

The board voted 8-0 to seal a deal to set the Bears’ taxes at $3.6 million per year for the former Arlington International Racecourse. The memorandum of understanding is also due to be considered later this week by the three local school districts that helped negotiate the deal with the village.

The agreement doesn’t necessarily mean the team will build a new stadium on the site, as it once proposed, but it gives the Bears what officials said they always wanted, and haven’t gotten from Chicago: tax certainty.

Mayor Tom Hayes said the deal is a significant advancement.

“We will only agree to the new Bears stadium in the village of Arlington Heights if it’s a win-win for our community,” he said, “if it provides a net fiscal positive for the village of Arlington Heights.”

The Bears bought the 326-acre site in early 2023 for $197 million, and announced plans to build a $2 billion enclosed stadium there as part of a $5 billion development including housing, entertainment, parks and a sports hall of fame.

But new team President and CEO Kevin Warren shifted focus instead to a proposed new publicly owned lakefront stadium to replace the team’s home at Soldier Field. That proposal called for the Bears to invest $2.3 billion, with public funding of about $1 billion, plus up to $1.5 million in infrastructure, and additional costs for interest on loans.

But that plan never got support from Gov. JB Pritzker or top state lawmakers, who said they had priorities other than funding a private football team.

Only four residents commented on the tax deal at the Arlington Heights board meeting, which Hayes said suggests general public support.

Colin Gilbert congratulated the village for making the complicated deal happen.

“I’m a big fan of this … so let’s get it done,” he said. “Hopefully this puts us in the red zone, and you’ll punch this through and this whole town can start operating and getting ready to do a touchdown celebration to welcome the Bears …”

Resident Keith Moens was not so enthusiastic, suggesting that residents be given the same tax breaks that the “loser” Bears got in the deal, limiting future potential increases in year 2028 and beyond to the consumer price index between 2% and 5%, until construction begins.

Mark Bauer said tax subsidies for the team mean that residents like him will likely pay more in property taxes. He called for a stadium deal to be voted on in a taxpayer referendum, saying, “If it doesn’t pass, it shouldn’t happen.”

Any stadium deal would have to be approved by a joint review board of schools and other local taxing bodies, Village Manager Randall Recklaus said.

A key aspect of the Bears proposal in Arlington Heights that differs from the Chicago proposal, Recklaus said, is that the team would build and own the stadium with its own money, and pay taxes on it, unlike publicly owned stadiums like Soldier Field or Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago.

Under the agreement, the assessed value of the Bears’ land would be set at $125 million, the same amount set by the Cook County Board of Review. But since the team demolished the grandstand and other structures, the vacant site would be assessed at only 10% of that amount, for an annual tax of about $3.6 million — a significant cut from the current $8.9 million the Bears are paying in property taxes on the site.

The $3.6 million in taxes the Bears will pay is more than the $3 million the site paid when it was a horse racing track. It’s also more than the $2.7 million in property taxes Wrigley Field paid in 2021, but less than the $4.5 million the vacant Sears campus in Hoffman Estates paid that same year. The United Center in Chicago paid $6.1 million in property taxes in 2021, and SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., paid $8.8 million, Recklaus said. SoFi is home stadium to the Los Angeles Chargers and Rams and sits on a former racetrack site.

The deal must also be considered this week by the boards of Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214 and Palatine-based Township High School District 211, along with Palatine Community Consolidated School District 15, which get the bulk of taxes from the site.

The agreement has “guardrails,” Recklaus said, to ensure the project will pay the cost of any new students that might come from new housing, which would be years away.

Village officials may consider creating a tax increment financing district, or TIF, to freeze future property taxes on the site and use any increase to fund improvements there.

But team officials said that would not be enough to do a stadium deal. So the agreement also calls for all the parties to lobby state lawmakers to create a payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, which would be subject to local agreement, and could set future tax levels for 23 to 40 years.

Village Board members unanimously supported the tax deal, if the village is protected financially.

Trustee Nicolle Grasse considered it “a great place to start for all the parties involved.”

And Trustee Scott Shirley added, “I wish the Bears would kind of stop yanking around and get serious about Arlington Heights, because it just seems like they’re always looking somewhere else.”

The approval came on the same day that a union in Chicago rallied for the city’s 2% hotel tax that pays for Soldier Field and Guaranteed Rate loans to go instead for hotel worker salary increases.

Unite Here Local 1, a union that said it represents more than 2,000 hotel room attendants, said the tax should generate $42 million annually for workers instead of going for new stadiums as proposed.

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