A First Look At The Chicago Fire's New Stadium Concept
The Chicago Fire unveiled the first look at their new $750M stadium concept Thursday, opening their Dear Chicago Experience Center on the 14th floor of The Wrigley Building.
The center is designed to offer the public and the team's clients a physical visualization of what the privately funded stadium at The 78 will look like, years before it is built. It features a built-out replica of the stadium, an interior bar, a model suite and a welcome center.
The goal of the experience center is to showcase how the stadium will feel when it opens, said Dave Baldwin, team president of business operations.
"This is part showroom, part command center," Baldwin said. "The idea is that this will allow our fans to actually put themselves in the new stadium."
The team's billionaire owner, Joe Mansueto, announced plans to privately finance the Major League Soccer stadium last June.
Mansueto purchased the team in 2019 in a deal valued at about $400M. He then spent $65M to move the team to Soldier Field from Bridgeview, but the club still faces limitations, such as working around the Bears' schedule.
The project has stayed on its initial construction timeline, under which the project is expected to break ground on March 3, with the stadium slated to open in the second quarter of 2028.
That will give the team a couple of months in the summer to host nonsoccer events to test out the stadium's capabilities ahead of the 2028 MLS season, Mansueto Office Real Estate Head Ari Glass told Bisnow.
The team recently completed a revised look at its budget with its contractor, and everything has held to budget thus far — though the team does have contingency funding in case prices change, Glass said.
"Everything is looking like it's going to be sourced domestically, and everything looks like it's going to be sourced at the pricing that we've been holding for eight months now," he said.
The initial price tag for the stadium was pegged at $650M, but it has since risen to $750M, not because of the macroeconomic environment but because of elevated design choices at the stadium, Glass said.
This includes the steel elements on the building's canopy, brick completely enclosing all four sides of the stadium, and premium finishes on stadium suites.
"At the end of the day, Joe had a vision," Glass said.
The 22,000-seat stadium will be a long-awaited anchor tenant for The 78, Related Midwest's megadevelopment. The new stadium earned City Council approval in September.
The new home for the Fire will open soon after another new MLS stadium begins operations: Etihad Park, New York City FC's $780M, 25,000-seat home, which is slated to open in Queens in 2027. The stadium is one of the host venues for the 2028 Olympic soccer tournament and is across the street from the Mets’ Citi Field.
Progress on the Fire's stadium also comes as two of Chicago's other teams, the Bears and White Sox, are mired in drawn-out processes to find new homes.
Indiana Gov. Mike Braun has vowed to "do everything" to make a Bears move to the state happen as the state's legislature readies a bill with incentives to lure the team from Illinois. The White Sox have been largely quiet after an aggressive 2024 push to build a new stadium at The 78.
