News: Fire Moving to Soldier Field

I've said this a lot on various forums, but the rate limiting step for going to see the Fire isn't always cost so much as a willingness to spend two hours plus commuting time of your Saturday watching the Fire.

If there's one bit of fortune the team received after two yers of bad luck, the 30k plus who saw closing day saw a fantastic game on the field.

 

And all the "interesting" smells!

 

Thankfully, the route from out here barely touched Harlem, which is good since that's always a choke point on the way in. Seriously, Seat Geek was easy for those of us coming from the southwest. I get it wasn't for everybody, but two and a half hours makes for a nice day out.

 

There was a brief period where it was all real. When you can't get a ticket from the team, you get a very real feel for the enthusiasm from the secondary market prices. For a brief time, all tickets were priced over face value. Unfortunately, as you said, it was maybe half a season.

 

But how many games were left in the season? (Let's see who gets that reference)

 

How many of you lived near the Toy

My entire social life revolved around that area, I used to take girls to the lot where the ground was eventually built, and, you know

Watched tons of movies at Harlem Corners. Got into altercations around there, and kicked it all around. Haunted Trails was the spot. My ex worked at Niko's right around there. My one "friend" got into a huge fight in the Kmart parking lot over there. So many memories before th FIre's tenure there

 

Didn’t live near there, but my late grandfather, who lived in Cicero, was a Reverend at the Bridgeview Church of God down the street from on 71st. The team is obviously better off in a more central location, but I really do hope those taxpayers get their money’s worth for that stadium. I’m pretty sure that for a while the property taxes were out of control in part because the municipality wasn’t making what was projected from it.

 

What I'm trying to figure out is... if the Bears move out and flee to the sticks, how would they disassemble the flying saucer and restore the old aesthetic?

Not saying it can't be done, but that would be pretty expensive and, inevitably, you would have to compensate for it by using Soldier Field as a setting for college football and high school championship games, which as we all know, means that footies would have to look at gridiron lines once more.

 

Nope. You refurbish the stadium and make up the difference on the back end when you sell the team.

 

Anyone know if you buy a resale ticket off vivid seats or wherever in the premium club seats section 108 or 110. Do you still get the perks like "$30 of food and beverage credit per ticket, per match (including alcohol)" like it states on the fire site?

 

Unfortunately no idea.

 

So...in six years the Fire have the run of Soldier Field?

 

We'll always have to share it with "Fall classics." I just hope that they do something to improve the sightlines. I'm sick of not seeing the near touchline.

 

No, the Park District will still have the run of Soldier Field.

 

Any major college football game will be in Arlington, the Bears will want to own that.

Probably still have the HBCU game and some high school games, but those are easy to work around.

 

They'll have competition, no doubt (and I'm sure they'll try extra hard to pry the Big Ten championship from Indy), but they'll still be able to draw in a Big Ten or Notre Dame vs MAC matchup once a year without much difficulty if they try.

One wildcard scheduling issue for the future is USA Rugby wants either the 2027 or 2031 Rugby World Cup, which falls right smack in the middle of the NFL season. World Rugby is more flexible than FIFA with how they handle venues (they'll let cities host for just one or two games in a single weekend), but you'd have to think that they'd want Soldier Field (and the Citrus Bowl) as one of the very few NFL-quality venues without an NFL or college tenant.

 

My knee jerk reaction to rugby in SF was the width. A rugby field is a minimum 68m. That's roughly 75 yards, which is a standard FIFA World Cup(R) width. But rugby has been held at Soldier Field before, so I guess it's not an issue. Does anyone know how wide SF's field is when the Fire play?

 

A final de temporada finaliza el acuerdo de 3 años entre Chicago Fire y el CPD por el arrendamiento del Soldier Field. Todo indica que #CF97 activará la cláusula de 8 años adicionales de alquiler (hasta 2030) al no haber podido construir un estadio propio en el downtown. #MLS pic.twitter.com/B1HRDNqEtL

— Jaime Ojeda (@jaimeor96) June 8, 2022

eight more years?

 

They'll fix any width issues if, when the Bears move out.

 

I’d love it but I don’t know that this is a reliable report of anything. It says that everything indicates they’ll stay since they haven’t been able to build their own stadium but Joe has been pretty clear that they aren’t trying to build a stadium? I mean, assuming the Bears leave this is good news, I just feel like it’s more speculation than news at this point.

 

City looking into putting a dome on Soldier Field

 

Huh? They probably should have thought about that in 2001.

 

Agreed. How much is that going to cost and how are they actually going to do it while protecting the stadium's historic features? Also how long will it take? If it happens the Fire move back to Bridgeview for a couple seasons?

After some thought, it's probably not going to happen.