Bears to reveal how to pay for $4.6 billion domed lakefront stadium development — and what it will look like

The plans, according to the team, will include “additional green and open space with access to the lakefront for families and fans on the Museum Campus.”

The Bears will finally open the playbook Wednesday on what sources say will be a $4.6 billion project to put a domed stadium on a lakefront site that has rather suddenly become their primary focus.

Just a day before they’re expected to use the first pick in the NFL draft to select quarterback Caleb Williams, the Bears will hold a news conference at Soldier Field to unveil plans for “a state-of-the-art, publicly owned stadium, along with additional green and open space with access to the lakefront” on the Museum Campus.

The cost of the total project with the envisioned hotel, bars and restaurants — “all the bells and whistles,” a source told the Sun-Times — will be $4.6 billion, partly funded with 40-year bonds backed by the city’s hotel tax. The remaining debt on the renovation of Soldier Field would be rolled into that 40-year payback plan.

That cost still would not include taxpayer-backed infrastructure improvements needed to make the stadium — and the whole Museum Campus — more accessible.

Chicagoan Marc Ganis, who has advised numerous NFL teams on stadium financing, called the timing of Bears President Kevin Warren’s stadium reveal “brilliant.”

“The national and international focus of the sports world on Thursday night is going to be on the NFL draft and, in particular, the No. 1 draft pick — and the Bears own the No. 1 pick. By announcing the stadium plan the day before, it will get a tremendous amount of attention locally and also nationally and internationally,” Ganis said.

“Tens of millions of people around the country are going to see the renderings and the plans for the new stadium. The attention that it will receive will be dramatic — all because they have the No. 1 pick. It wouldn’t be the same if they had the No. 2 pick,” Ganis added.

“If everything goes as hoped,” he said, April 24 and April 25 will become “seminal dates” in Bears history — “taking the quarterback that they hope will be their franchise star leading them to Super Bowls for many years to come, and the stadium that will be the first that the team will ever have built and designed themselves.”

The Bears have already committed to investing more than $2 billion in private money to build the stadium south of Soldier Field. Total cost of the stadium alone, sources said, could easily approach $3.5 billion.

Among the questions to be answered Wednesday is how the team plans to fill that $1.5 billion construction funding gap. They also need to explain how they would deconstruct much of Soldier Field while preserving historic colonnades and other original aspects of the stadium, which was dedicated as a war memorial.

Mayor Brandon Johnson already has cracked the door open to a potential public subsidy to help the Bears, just as he has for the White Sox plans for a new ballpark at the vacant South Loop parcel known as “the 78.”

Johnson’s decision to attend Wednesday’s Soldier Field unveiling could be a sign he’s prepared to put the city’s money where his mouth is, even if progressive voters who helped put him in office question his spending priorities.