COLLABORATION
Rethinking How Cities and Sports Franchises Work Together
Chicago is facing an unprecedented moment: five professional sports franchises are seeking new or renovated stadiums at the same time. The old approach — teams propose, the city reacts, taxpayers worry — isn't working. Each side seems to be talking past the others.
What's missing isn't expertise. Each party has all the experts they need in stadium design, development, and finance. What's missing is a shared vision — a common understanding of the problem they're trying to solve together.
Collaborator: Chicago Architecture Center
THE CHICAGO MODEL
Three elements, inseparable.
Every successful urban stadium district follows this formula. Every failure abandons it.
Teams
We Love
Great franchises with deep community roots and loyal fan bases.
Stadiums
We Love
Venues designed as public buildings that honor the game and the city.
Communities
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Thriving neighborhoods anchored — not displaced — by the stadiums.
WHAT WE DID
We consulted with dozens of people from organizations here and across the country that understand stadiums and cities from every angle — the teams, the Fed, the City, the Chamber, corporations, developers, leading architects and planners, policy experts, economic development organizations, and many others.
We also benefited from a working group of experienced thinkers who kept pushing us to see the bigger picture — not just helping advance this current round of talks, but reimagining what stadiums could do for Chicago.
What emerged challenged our assumptions and expanded our ambitions. This report offers a vision of what stadiums are and what role they should play in Chicago. We believe establishing a shared vision — a Chicago Model — can transform negotiations from parallel monologues into genuine dialogue.
THE REPORT