The First Million Is Always The Hardest
The First Million Is Always The Hardest podcast is your introduction to the mindset and mechanics behind success. In this podcast, host Bo Kemp breaks down why the first million —whether in dollars, impact, or purpose — is always the hardest milestone to achieve.
The First Million Is Always The Hardest
Why do the Bears Need a New Stadium at All?
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Video Version: https://youtu.be/2J7DJnbHrTc
Guest: Edward Peck — Architect, Edward Peck Design
In this episode, Bo Kemp sits down with architect Edward Peck to unpack one of Chicago’s biggest questions: why do the Bears need a new stadium at all?
Following Peck’s proposal for a redesigned Soldier Field, the conversation explores whether the Bears should renovate the lakefront stadium, build somewhere else in Chicago, or leave the city entirely for a new development. But this is about more than architecture — it is about economics, identity, fan experience, and what the future of the franchise should look like.
Bo and Edward discuss what modern NFL teams want from a stadium, the tradeoffs between preserving an iconic location and starting from scratch, and why the Bears’ decision has become a broader debate about public funding, development, and regional competition.
This episode is about more than where the Bears play.
It is about what a stadium means to a city — and whether building new is really the only path forward.|
Are you ready to grow your business, build wealth, and spark transformation in the South Suburbs of Chicago? Visit Southlanddevelopment.org today and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected, get the resources, and be the first to hear about the achieved summit where entrepreneurs, developers, investors, and change makers come together to ignite growth and opportunity. Don't just watch change happen, be a part of it. Join the movement at Southlanddevelopment.org and start building your legacy today. In this episode of The First Million Is Always the Hardest, I sit down with architect Edward Peck to unpack one of the biggest questions in Chicago sports. From the future of Soldier Field to the economics, politics, and fan experience behind stadium development. This is a conversation about much more than football. It's about what a stadium means to a city. Well, welcome to the First Million is Always the Hardest podcast. I'm your host, Bo Kemp, and I'm really excited that we have a friend of the organization and someone who's a a big time thinker, Edward Pick, who is here with us today. So, Edward, love for you just to introduce yourself to the viewers and uh the listeners and tell a little bit about what got you to this project, which is related to the bears.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I'm Edward Peck. I'm an architect that's been practicing for 30-some years now. Uh and you know, it started my my career, it has been very diverse. I've I focused on materials and technologies at one stage in my career. I went into a facade and what we call building skin consultation, which really deals with high-tech materials like structural glass, ETFE, fabric. Uh, and I came back to architecture, traditional practice. I started my career there and came back to it recently and launched my own firm in 2019. Um, and as this sort of evolved, this conversation about the Bears and move in from Soldier Field, I kind of put together all of my you know past experiences in the sports world. Uh stadium, I've been involved in two Super Bowl stadiums, several soccer stadiums around the world, um, mainly uh incorporate in sort of the technology side, the sustainability side, and the materials. Um, but I've been in and around sport architecture for for years. And so we saw the challenges that the bears were looking at. Yeah. And we wanted to kind of look engage in a proof of concept, essentially, that the reasons and the logic that was given for the Bears to explore other sites, um, you know, and and basically sort of take that challenge, right, and look at those opportunities, see how those challenges could become opportunities for a better future for the Bears.
SPEAKER_01So just for clarity for those who are listening who may not be immersed in the issue, the Chicago Bears uh football team from the NFL um currently play at Soldiers Field, which is on the lake in the city of Chicago, um, but they do not own that stadium. Um and so they have been looking, because valuation uh tied directly to franchises is often tied to ownership of a stadium, of building and owning a new stadium. Ideally, they originally thought they wanted to do that in the city of Chicago, and for years they've been trying to find a a way to do that and a place to do that. They've been looking at doing that in the suburbs of Chicago, both the north and west suburbs, and um have been considering the south suburbs, but have also been looking at the northwest Indiana area, which is a suburb of Chicago as well. And so there is right now an ongoing and raging conversation and debate about where the bears are likely to be, and we're lucky to have someone who's been doing some really good thinking about what are the issues that they should consider. So, you know, Edward, given that you kind of took it upon yourself to do this proof of concept and you started with questioning the premise of why we couldn't redevelop Soldiers Field, kind of give us a sense of how you approach the design aspect of this and and kind of how you saw what the opportunities could be differently maybe than than others.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think we've had the opportunity of kind of uh here in two years of debate, right? So that's an advantage to our design team that we've been uh following the conversations about Soldier Field, about the other locations, and kind of understood the four critical reasons why Soldier Field is not really a home for the future, why not viable for the future. One of them is just the capacity and the spectator sort of amenities that is uh above and beyond in other stadiums in the new stadiums. And you know, they have you know sweets. Like SoFi and all of these new stadiums, they have sweet boxes at the turf level, they have them up high, they have just all these amenities, and then the capacity. You need the capacity for Super Bowls, so you need to be over like 70,000 uh spectators for that. The other thing is for a northern climate like Chicago, the Super Bowl is no longer going to risk uh giving it to a city in the northern climate without an enclosed stadium. Yeah, so that's number two. Um, number three is a financial sort of revenue generator beyond a team owning the stadium itself, owning and control in sort of this mixed use or entertainment district, as we call it, that is adjacent to the stadium. Uh, this doesn't want to be five blocks away, and it also wants to be controlled by the ownership, right? Because that's a revenue generator. And so Soldier Field in the history was well, that's difficult. How do you do that? It's in the middle of the lakefront, it's in the middle of the park. Uh so that was the third element that we looked at. And then the fourth is really not an architectural solution. So this was a little bit beyond what our assignment was. Yeah. But as thinkers and creative thinkers, I guess, in this sort of industry, understanding that there needs to be a public-private sort of partnership and come to the table and kind of work out uh terms for it. So they don't own the stadium, but how can they profit off the stadium and their investment in the stadium? Yeah. And that has to be a creative thing. That's the park district that's the structural thing. And that's the bears, right? And so I think that has been dismissed. And I think those parties, those stakeholders need to come back. Because my view is if so if the Bears build a stadium that's enclosed anywhere in a 70 mile radius of Chicago, the revenue that Soldier Field now has that's outside of the football world is going to decrease significantly. Significantly. Right? Because uh three-night Taylor Swift concert, whatever, that's gonna go to the enclosed stadium. So the the park district has stated we're okay. The bears can leave. 80% of our revenue is actually generated by other elements. Those elements are not secure if there's an enclosed stadium nearby. And so I'm really concerned about the future of Soldier Field itself, but I'm also feel that the Bears, you know, a team is a city team, right? Yeah. And, you know, you go where the people are, you build where the people are. There's a lot of NFL teams that are taking the two approaches. You build outside of the city and you have a lot of land to work with, or you stay inside the city. Um, I was involved in the as of as was uh um the management of the Bears involved in uh the US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. I mean, the the true character of that stadium is that it's right downtown in the middle of the fabric.
SPEAKER_01It's in the middle of everything.
SPEAKER_02And it just is exciting to be there. It's connected to the neighborhood, it's connected to that sort of mixed-use uh restaurants, bars, all of that around it.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's interesting. Um a couple of stories to tell, but you know, um I've had the ability to work on stadiums and arenas as well. And generally speaking, at least up until more recently, those projects leveraged a lot of public money in order to be built for a substantial private benefit. Um and many of those instances did not generate the economic benefit to the broader community as kind of expected. I've been blessed to work on some that were exceptions to that rule. Um, you know, I helped to build a prudential arena in Newark, New Jersey, and a little bit of a story in that at the time when Corey Booker was running for mayor, um, my job was to come up with a strategy of how to avoid building that stadium because we had a financial um at the time a financial cliff of$250 million, and we had to put$250 million into the stadium to build it. Um but once we got elected, once he got elected and I joined his administration, we determined that the cost of not building it was going to be greater than the cost of building it. So we ended up moving forward. Um and I learned a lot in that process. In the first six years that that building was built and opened, it opened in October 27, 2007, with John Bon Jovi performing on time and on budget, which I am very proud of in New Jersey. That is not an easy feat. Um, the first six years, almost every article around it was talking about how it wasn't achieving all the things it was supposed to do. But if you look at, you know, six plus years, it's quite the opposite. It was the economic engine that drove the entirety of downtown um uh Newark, and there's been billions, literally billions of dollars that's been invested. A 30 uh story uh um uh glass office building that's been built, the redevelopment of the Haynes Building, which is the old apartment store, the redevelopment of Military Park, the redevelopment of Newark Penn Station, which is the train station that takes you into New York City, all of that has come afterwards, plus additions of hotels, additions of eateries, and all these sorts of things. But that's not typically what happens, right? Typically what happens is something very different. Um, and I'm just curious when you were thinking about the implications of the bears moving, how much of that entertainment district that you described and the revenue and the way that the public benefits from it w came into play in your thinking about design.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's huge. And I think a well sort of planned project can become a catalyst for that economic development, right? And so that's kind of the gear, but you have to do it well located. So, and this is kind of where my background in urban planning as well as landscape design and architecture, kind of putting all of these pieces together and understanding the fabric of a city um and the future sort of revenue generation uh generator of that. Um, moving my my biggest concern is if you move to uh these suburbs, won't even name them.
SPEAKER_01Okay, um you know, uh the bears you're welcome to come to the south suburbs if it doesn't work out here in Chicago, just I have to say that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so you take it away from the epicenter of the city and those entertainment districts which are so key and vital to the the ownership and to the revenue generated, and not only to the ownership, but also that's a sales tax payback to the state, the city that invests in the infrastructure. Okay, right? So that's return on investment. So if you invest, you know, a billion dollars in the suburbs for infrastructure for a new stadium, this is state money or taxpayers' money, that revenue may not come back. It may not have the return on investment as it would in the epicenter, the city, the urban sort of fabric. And so that was a big challenge. So um that was a key thing that I think any other proposal in this the the soldier field, the park museum campus kind of solution did not solve the entertainment district. Yeah, and this was you know, the thinking of I I was part of the engineering firm that worked on Hudson Yards in New York, and that's a huge structural deck over the rail yards. That's right. Develop a new real estate in Manhattan. Um, and there's proposals here. I mean, we've done this, we've done it uh for Grant Park and and Millennium Park. So thinking creatively of how do we sort of take down or deck over Lakeshore Drive and the rail just to the west of the stadium that connects South Loop to the park better. There's this sort of connection that happens, but it also allows us to create new real estate that didn't happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Hudson Yards is a great example because I lived in New York for a long time before I moved here, and that area was effectively dead. Um and you know, your point for those who don't know what Hudson Yards is, essentially, when when you are describing creating new real estate, what you mean is almost like Jetsons, right? Instead of building on the ground, they actually just went up a couple stories and then they built a whole city on top of a city. And they weren't sure how people would interact with this. Um, and it's become a phenomenal success. Um and the idea that we could do the same thing here in Chicago, and what that does is it provides another revenue source that actually allows for the economic engine to work, right? Revenue that goes to the Bears, which they need for their purposes, a reason for someone to go 24-7 to the region, even if there's not a game. There's only going to be eight games a year for football at least, right? So I have to have a reason to activate this space uh in a way that's different. Um, and those are some of the things that you're talking about that do a better job of integrating kind of the the community needs are and the public monies that are having to be invested.
SPEAKER_02So you you think about the game days. I mean, there's there's eight, nine home games plus maybe off-season games. That's leaves 350, you know, days of the year or something that you have to figure out how do you generate that revenue, how do you activate everything that you just built, all of that entertainment district. If you take a 10-mile radius around Arlington Heights, there's about 700 to 800,000 people. You take a 10 mile radius from Soldier Field, it's 2.8 million people, right? You have the museum campus, that's a tourism hub. You have the convention, you know, center, and all of the tourism, all of the existing hotels as well, right? So when you're existing infrastructure, not stuff that you have to build, yeah, is existing, it's already there. So we're we're building more infrastructure, right? The deck, but that's going to be that catalyst, I think, to the whole South. And then we have kind of you know, other stadiums being considered just to the west. Yeah. And think about that connection between the lake, the soldier field, and the stadiums going to the west of that. Right. And that whole east-west sort of thoroughway through the South Loop, what would 10 years be down the line and how could that change transform?
SPEAKER_01A few things kind of jump out at me, and I'm gonna take the time to tell a bit of a story. You know, one of the questions that people should be asking themselves, if they're not, is why does the bears ownership need a new stadium at all? Right? And part of it is understanding what the economics are for franchises. So um I started my career on Wall Street, I did mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley. Um, and when you go through this training program, sometimes you get lucky enough that they pull you out that summer and let you work on a first deal. My first deal was a reorganization of the Boston Celtics. Now, at the time, the Celtics were considered to be the number the highest valued franchise in America at$200 million. And this was a completely different time because in the you know late 80s and early 90s, only individuals were allowed to own sports franchises. No corporations were allowed to own, and there were only two exceptions: the uh Anaheim Ducks, owned by Disney, and the Green Bay Packers that were owned by the community. Every other individual for any major league team uh was owned by an individual by law. That changed about 10 years, uh seven to eight years later. My job, which sounds glorious, it was not, was to hunt down the richest 200 people in America, find the time that they can get on the phone and talk to my partner, and for my partner to pitch them buying the Boston Celtics. But what I learned in this process is how what actually changes the valuation of a franchise. You know, most of us think it is popularity. It's not, right? It's not ticket sales, it's a very small percentage. Um, the biggest driver, the single biggest driver, is media. So based on where you are located, the value of your your national media contract is shared for everyone, but the value of your local media contract is specific to you. So big market teams are worth more simply because they're in larger media markets. That's why you see the imbalance between small, like, you know, OKC, you know, Oklahoma versus someone that's in LA or someone that's in Chicago or someone that's in New York. Merchandising also doesn't make a difference. And not that it doesn't make a difference, but it doesn't change the economics. The only other thing other than media that really changes the val the value of a franchise is the sport the the ownership of the stadium itself. Right. And what that has meant is that the wealthiest of franchise owners were the ones that could position themselves to get a larger and larger share of that stadium, especially when the days of having the public finance the stadium are starting to go away. You know, but if you are a billionaire but you're still one of the poorest of the billionaires, that's not an easy thing to do. You know, I mean it's kind of crazy to say it that way, but you know, there are rich billionaires and then there are less rich billionaires. And the less rich ones have a different thing that they have to go through in order to get to a place where they get to create a so fi stadium like it's in LA or some of the other stadiums that you've talked about. And I mentioned that just because it helps to frame why is this so important to the Bears franchise themselves? Like why do they need to own this or have some sort of revenue that they can generate? Um so, with that said, um I'm I'm curious uh from your perspective, um, you've done some design things that are really interesting that you think will reduce the cost of building a new stadium, but still secure all of the elements. And this roof that you've described is a porton design element. Just walk people through what it is that you think we can do with the roof, in addition to the elevated kind of entertainment district that really makes this almost a destination, in addition to the fact that it's the home of potentially the bears.
SPEAKER_02And that kind of goes back to the evolution of stadium. I mean, all the way back to the Roman Coliseum. Yeah. Um initially they're all open air. They're all you know part of the elements. Now the Roman Coliseum had a retractable fabric roof to shade the spectators. Yeah. We took a long time to get back to that sort of technology, but that was the evolution. We went from completely open air to then trying to figure out how to shade and protect the spectators, but leave the field open. And a lot of that was because it was natural turf or it was natural. You needed the grass to grow. And so then the shift was okay, looking at enclosing the the stadiums, and that's really in the 60s and 70s, where these are long span structures. These are they have to span 900 plus feet. And so to do that, you need a lightweight cladding material. So the structure not only has to support itself and span that distance, but now it has to support what we call the skin. And so that's the first generation of enclosed stadiums is all fabric. Yeah. Uh, because that was really the material of the time that was lightweight and could handle those sort of structural conditions. But if you've been into a stadium or an arena clad with fabric, you're disconnected with the environment. Right. You may have natural light, but it's a weird feeling. You spend a time in there and you you just are so disconnected. And so then the introduction to ETFE, which really was introduced into architecture as a cladded material in the 80s, but it took time, it took about 20 years before it was involved in some major projects. That transformed it. And now you could actually have so we need to enclose a stadium, but we kind of still want to feel the environment of Chicago. It would be great to have a game day, we're protected, but we still see the blizzard. You know, we still are connected to that element. And ETFE allows us to be a few.
SPEAKER_01And what is ETFE exactly?
SPEAKER_02So ETFE is a copolymer plastic, essentially, that is a thin sheet. And it as a thin sheet, it doesn't work so well. Sofi is a single layer, but in the northern climate, we integrate ETFE, which is we call a foil or a film, uh, into multi-layer sort of cushions. For insulation. For insulation. And um that that is a key part for the northern climate. It also sort of stabilizes the foil, which might, you know, getting off into an engineering sort of thing. It stabilizes the foil under its low air pressure rather than letting tension into the foil. Yeah. Like you tensioned fabric. And there's a long, that's a whole engineering sort of lecture into itself. But the opportunities that ETFE allows for stadiums to be connected, to be protected, and the third element, which is really great, um, and you know, this was more important ten years ago when turf grass was causing a lot of injuries and and or or artificial turf, should I say, was causing a lot of injuries, but the natural turf was still kind of the the premier material. ETFE has tr UV transparency. Gotcha. So you could grow turf underneath it. Um and now those are balanced out a little bit, so that's not as key of an element. But ETFE plays a significant role in a sort of good stadium design now.
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SPEAKER_00Your listening to the first million is always the hardest. We are now returning to the show.
SPEAKER_01You know, um we talked a little bit about people who were, you know, in one location, moved to another location, and are moving back. Um I also spent some time in the Washington, D.C. area. RFK Stadium was technically uh right at the edge of the city of DC. They closed it down and they moved out to the suburbs into Maryland. Now they're looking to move back. Right. And this is an issue that I think people could be really short-sighted on because we've had this trend in the United States of once we cidified everything, so to speak, then all of a sudden wanted to suburbanize everything and have often needed to come back. Density still matters in the process of design. It still matters in thinking about cost, right? Because the, you know, you you pay um for linear distance for a lot of infrastructure, you pay for coverage for services and things of that nature. And so the denser the population is, the more you can make the payments of those things efficient. Um my sense of it is that may be one of the issues longer term. You know, the decision to move the stadium is a hundred-year decision. It's not a 20-year decision that's going to be rerouted.
SPEAKER_02You can't flip that decision.
SPEAKER_01You can't flip it very quickly. And I don't know to what degree people are really thinking about it in the course of a hundred years. It feels as though this is a 20-year decision, not a hundred-year decision. Um, when you as a design person and an architect think about this, how do you rationalize you know where to move to and if to move at all?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean site evaluation is a huge part of what architects do for clients. Um and you know, we note just not just the topography and the geometry, you know, the geography of it, but also kind of understanding if you if you pay attention to your 20, 30 year career in architecture and in development, you kind of understand the other financial factors that go into design. And so again, you know, bringing that to an urban center, to an epicenter, what I call of uh the density, um, I think is key. It's a Chicago team. Um the you know, because we're on the lake, our suburbs go from the north to the west to the south. Um but the central sort of epicenter is the city still. And so to pull a stadium out, like you said, I think is a 20-year decision. It's it's an it's not thinking about the long term. Um it disenfranchises the people in the south.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Right? It disenfranchises a lot of the things by doing that. Whereas if you keep it central, everyone is sort of responsible to come back into the city that has allowed the team to prosper, right? Um so uh you know, when we're looking at different sites, I mean th those things would be the key. We would be looking at sites that could, you know, uh facilitate parking, could facilitate the stadium itself, the entertainment district, all of that. And so that was the challenge with us is if we were going to develop a proof of concept for Soldier Field and not just another location in the city, which I would argue Soldier Field is choice one, choice two is some place else in Chicago, and there's a number of sites that uh we could advise on, right?
SPEAKER_01And possibly the South Suburbs, just want to get that in.
SPEAKER_02Some place that has a you know a good connection to the city. Um and Soldier Field, so that was the proof of concept. Can we accomplish those four elements that we talked about at Soldier Field? And I think not only can we do it, not only is it viable, but you can do it in a way that is progressive, that is visionary, that is really uh a stadium that will have that uh transformative, catalytic sort of effort, right? Or or impact, should I? So moving forward, I just think that that would drive so much economic development, so much um opportunity, and reconnection, not only, and it's not just about dollars and cents. So that's the other thing you know we do as as urban planners, our architects, we're not just thinking about dollars and cents for our client, we're also thinking about societal sort of impact. And that connection, I think we should be decking over Lakeshore Drive and the rail in more locations. Yeah. Because that's a disconnect. You know, I lived in Lincoln Park on Fullerton. You know, that disconnect of Lakeshore Drive between the beach, the park, the zoo, that and where we were, that urban fabric, there was kind of three stages to get into the the city, right? Or out to the lake. And so this idea is this interconnection from we we programmed green space, we let the green space bec become our connector. Yeah, right. And so our design kind of shows green space to the west of our entertainment di district that is connecting to the South Loop and the the urban fabric of that, and we're pulling people in and across the site to the east and and a better connection to the lake. So that's the other we haven't talked about. Yeah. One of the one of the challenges, you know, as as uh Lucas could tell you, of of proposing something on the park, you know, is you know, going back to the burn and plane, going back, uh, you know, uh everyone wants to preserve and protect that. And so that's another reason to do Soldier Field, because it's already there. You can justify redeveloping something that has already been approved and is part of that lakefront. And so by doing that, but also improving the connection to the park, I think is advantageous.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, um we talked a little bit about RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., and one of the things that's of note is the Washington team um left for I don't know exactly how long, but maybe 20 years. But nothing happened with RFK. They tried to put some programming in it, um, it was very um uh infrequently used, but the structure was so big, right, that it couldn't ever be knocked down. What I think a lot of people don't understand is that 60% of the cost of demolishing anything is in the transportation of it. And here in the Chicago area, you're not allowed to have a what they call a C and D or construction and demolition dump within almost an hour and a half or two hours of here. So that means every single truckload of everything that you do has to be trucked out of the city at an expensive rate. If the Bears were not going to play here, this building would never be demolished.
SPEAKER_02I think I think it wouldn't be demolished, and I think it would become an economic drain on the park district and the city. And that's unfortunate, right?
SPEAKER_03And that's what happened to RFK.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And we have an opportunity, I think, because there's so much history there. And you can't build a legacy overnight, right? You can't, you know, transform sort of the character of the new soldier's home overnight. And I think there's so much history here with the old stadium, with the 2002 renovation. I am actually a big fan. I was in uh Zapata's office in Boston in probably 1999, sitting in their, they had like a 12-foot rep you know model of this of Soldier Field. And you could sit in at the 50-yard line in their model. It was really fabulous. But I'm I'm a big proponent of this contrast between old and new. And so that dynamic sort of character of the 2002 renovation and the historic colonnade and the the contrast that they have, they make each other more beautiful in a way. Um, and so that's something that, you know, this third renovation we were trying to capture. We weren't trying, we were trying to, we preserved the colonnade. The colonnade is still sort of focal point in our design. The 2002 is is really just expanded upon. It's not uh destroyed in any way, and then we've tried to, in a delicate and light way, right, develop this sort of uh roof system over the top, and you know, going outside of that perimeter. But then we've created this park, this green space around it, um, that is really phenomenal. And I think it's it's what we need to see how this can evolve and how it can impact the city.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's interesting. Um you talked about the history of Soldiers Field. You know, there aren't that many arenas and stadiums today that have that kind of lore and history, right? You know, they they redid the the Celtic Stadium, right? They've redone Fenway, they've redone New York, you know uh City Field, well, it used to be Met Stadium, now City Field, they've redone Yankee Stadium. They've tried to keep them in the same locations, but anybody who's been to those stadiums before the renovation and after realizes those are not exactly the same place. You know, there's only a few places left that really have that kind of lore in history. Even with the renovations to Soldiers Field, Soldiers Field still feels like Soldiers Field pre-renovations. You know, and obviously you've got Green Bay, they haven't renovated anything. They keep it real. Um but there's something about that that isn't actually makes it to some degree a destination. Um and and I'm a fan of what you've described just because having experienced Hudson Yards, um the idea that you created additional real estate that is vertical versus horizontal that allows for the access um to the space 24-7 um is something that I feel fits closer to what the reality of the need is and allows you to preserve some of the historical aspects and access to the lake that I think many people desire. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02And you know the other component of what makes Soldier Field Soldier Field, I think, is obviously the lakefront. You know, those are the climate, uh, the the microclimate that it has. But I mean the connection, when you see those Sunday night football sort of shots, it's so amazing to see the lake and to see the skyline. And we're in the shadows of the towers that have made Chicago Chicago. And to take that away, I think is just really unfortunate. And in fact, um just two days ago, um uh Kevin uh Warren of the Bears made a statement that uh was really perplexing to me. Um and he said basically, wherever we go, we want you to feel like you're in Chicago.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's not possible.
SPEAKER_02Well, that was perplexing. Yeah, that's it. But so I think there's there's a desire to still be in Chicago. There's a desire that you know the franchise is based on, like you said previously, the financial viability of a thing is really the market area that it is, and Chicago is one of the bigger markets. Um and so to decentralize that I think would be um interruptive to uh everything that they really want to be.
SPEAKER_01You know, one of the things um I learned in the process of building Prudential Arena um is that there is a whole series of costs that now are added to a location once you build a stadium. Um and those costs are even harder to share with the owners than you would probably think. So it really was uh necessary to think about what the implications are of the ongoing maintenance for the space. You know, every time you have an event, that means I've got to increase my sanitation, I've got to increase my water and sewer, I've got to increase police and fire, all these different things. When you are in a location that's already built, um like the museum campus for a lot of that, um, the incremental increase is fairly negligible versus when you're gonna go to a completely new place. And I don't know to what degree that's ever been a part of the conversation. I also have no sense of how you design that in to whatever the work that you're doing. But I can tell you at a practical level, I experienced that, knowing that you know I I hope to run the city and I knew that I had increased cost every day that we had an event and had to really think about that for my budget on a going forward basis. Has that come up in any of the work you've done in other places around the world? Um and how did you think about it, if at all, for the design you have for the Bears Stadium?
SPEAKER_02And I think that's a big component, right? If you can tap into existing infrastructure or expand existing infrastructure, that is much more economical to do than it is to create a new. Um and so that is a huge component of it. We we just feel like creating and and you know the state has volunteered basically the the one money or the one bucket of money that they're willing to invest in it would be for infrastructure. Yeah. And that's brand new.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_02But how again, going back to that return on investment, so you're you're pouring in millions of dollars to an infrastructure that is 30 miles outside the epicenter of Chicago. How is that return on investment for the state really and our taxpayer money going to really pay off for them? And so that incremental kind of uptick on the infrastructure here in the museum campus, I think is a a very sort of intelligent way of looking at that. We also have the, you know, when you think about sustainability and the and the planet and and embodied energy, I just wanted to reference, like we would be at um by renovating a stadium, you're saving about 60 to 70 percent of the embodied energy. Now, people that are outside of the design industry, what is embodied energy? I mean, it's the total energy consumed to extract, manufacture, transport, and assemble a all building materials that go into something, right? And so that is you think about we're leaving we're 95% of soldier field in our proposal stays. Yeah. And we're just adding elements to it that make it a viable sort of you know, Super Bowl ready and and 365 day a year sort of venue. Um so ecologically or or sustainability-wise, that's that's an intelligent move to to reuse um and and adapt rather than um build the new.
SPEAKER_01You know, um one of the things that I know is difficult is when people want to build big public buildings like this, um they need to get some sort of financing from the public. Sometimes that public financing is just to prove that the public is in favor of the project. Sometimes the project can't be done but for that public financing. And there may be a little bit of both, obviously, here. But it's very difficult in the state of the world that we're in right now to rationalize prioritizing the development of the stadium, of a new stadium anywhere in the state, versus any and all of the other expenses. Um, this is my pitch to the Bears and anyone that's listening. One source that I think may be overlooked that could be leveraged is Opportunity Zone financing. Um and um that restricts where you can be, because that means you have to develop the stadium in a place that has a population that is in need of development. But if you do that, that's an easy way for the state to actually give you access to billions of dollars in tax incentives that are already part of the structure of the federal legislation without having to pass special legislation specifically for you. Right? Um, and it gets you a large part of the way of where you want on the incentives without having anybody to have to take a political risk to get you there. But it means looking at different areas to develop. And I don't know, but I don't think that the locations that they're currently pursuing, um, at least publicly, that either of those would allow for them to leverage opportunity zones for that financing. Um, but there are some that are here that could, um, just as a ploy. If you want to talk to me, you can reach out to me, uh, Mr. Warren at your at any time. So I'm you know, the financing of this is a is is one of the tricks to kind of get there. Um and and and not in a negative way, but the bears ownership is thinking about generational wealth too, right? They've got grandkids, great grandkids, and future generations that they're trying to figure out how do I position that generational wealth to transition, um, whereas other owners have been able to do that. And I don't think that we should begrudge them for doing so, right? They have their own responsibility to their family, um, but we have to find the balance between the public investment um and their private interest in a way. And um, I think your proposal is not the only, but it's one of the proposals that could make a great deal of sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I I said return on investment a couple times, but I also say let's just say like return on culture, return on the community. You know, the the the elements that are not easily read on a spreadsheet. Yeah. Right. And and so having the soldier field sort of renovated um I believe has a better impact on the community itself, on the Chicago, you know, look at we're we've been ranked number one for several times as a as a large city. Um our tourism is up, but like how can we actually keep that moving? And you know, we can't be stable. We you know, and we can't digress. We really need to think visionary. Um but you know, Grant Park, Millennium Park, how has that changed the city? Right? What has been a major development since then that has impacted you know the core sort of area of the city? Uh you of course have some of the big you know, billion-dollar developments going on, the development of Fulton Market, the development of these other proposals. Um but I don't think anything would be as catalytic to the culture, to the to the stature of Chicago and to the return on investment for that public money that would be invested in this, than you would be with this project.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, um this show is not just about money, um, it's about development, it's about moving in a direction of personal fulfillment. And so I'd like to switch up our conversation a little bit and talk a little bit more about you. You know, not only are you a visionary in solving these sorts of problems, but you are an entrepreneur. As you mentioned, you started your own business, you've been developing that business, a service business, in a really competitive space. Um, and I'm interested in what your entrepreneurial journey has been like for you and how do you find personal fulfillment in the work that you do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I and I think as any business owner will tell you, it's a roller coaster, right? I mean, you have your good days. And you have uh some challenges. Um, but in the end of the day, you're working for your vision. And so that was really a key driver of uh going out on my own um and having that sort of authorship of the vision. Um, because I think, you know, my background is so diverse that I bring a unique mix to the field of architecture. Um you know, I look from everything from, as we talked about, the urban condition, the plan. And when I say urban condition, that's even the the world condition. Wherever a site is, right, there's a context. And to understand that context and to bring that into a site, to design the site at the same time you're designing the building, and having that sort of uh duality there improves the project. Yeah. And so that's a big differentiator of what I've been uh trying to grow as as our firm, as this one that really focuses on the architecture and the landscape, the environment. And then the third is technology and innovation. You know, so part of my career being in that sort of realm where I had advised companies on products. I was a you know, advanced in a product ETFE as well, and was the first one to bring it from Germany over to North America um in the late 90s. Um and so then I wasn't just kind of a uh first sort of adapter of that technology. I became a pioneer of that technology, modifying, working with it to get it through the code systems in the United States. And so those sort of areas of being uh able to understand the architecture, the environment, the landscape, but also the technology of architecture, uh hopefully positions me in a really good place to move forward into my practice.
SPEAKER_01Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to come and talk with us. I think this is a fascinating topic and probably a follow-up because once everybody hears this show, they're gonna have many, many more questions. And I think the idea of your Hudson Yards version, I what did you call it for us? Do you have have you branded it yet?
SPEAKER_02No, I it's just the transformative uh field right. I think it really is the area for it.
SPEAKER_01But um that idea I think is something that resonates regardless of the choice that the bears make. But I think the idea uh that we're talking about of how do you balance kind of that public-private interest for a public trust, which is in my mind what the bears is, and economic development. We're trying to find the best mixture of those two is a really important conversation that will continue uh on an ongoing basis.
SPEAKER_02So and I think the stakeholders, as you mentioned, really have to understand that this is a 50 and a hundred year decision. This can be transformative or it can be a lackluster destructive. Actually, not just lackluster. It would be destructive on elements of the city. And so I think all the stakeholders need to really understand the impact. Um and this decision has to be made in the next, you know, three, four. I think even the the president of the NFL came out just yesterday saying the bears need to make a decision about this. And I think, you know, thinking about the future, thinking about the hundred-year idea of where the Chicago should be as a city and uh as a society, I think this plays into that, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you so much, Edward. Appreciate you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Thanks. Thank you.