The city of Gary could use some love. 

Based on what we’ve seen, the Bears are looking for a deal that’s a big win for them and a lot less for the municipality that hosts them. And Gary seems to be OK with that. 

That’s unfortunate, because sports arenas, teams and cities should share in the success that big-time sports can bring. If the project revitalized one of Gary’s neighborhoods, it could be a good thing for both sides. 

But that’s not what’s being proposed. 

Gary has had civic dreams before. Its downtown stands as a testament to these thwarted ambitions.

Its main north-south street, Broadway, has its north terminus at the colossal lakefront Gary Works. Dual domed structures housing City Hall and the Lake County Superior Court sit astride the main thoroughfare as part of a never-completed 1920s urban plan to create a grand civic space as a gateway for the city. The elevated east-west Indiana Toll Road separates the U.S. Steel complex from this underused space. 

This area has seen previous efforts at revival. The now-vacant Genesis Convention Center was built in 1981 and operated as recently as 2020. Since 1984, the Gary Metro Center Station connects Greyhound bus service with the South Shore Line, the convention center and downtown. And the U.S. Steel Yard, home to the minor league team Gary SouthShore RailCats, is just three blocks east. It opened in 2003 and has provided a seasonal injection of energy into the area. But neither the convention center nor the multimodal station provides much architectural interest and need to be redeveloped. While Gary has proposed three distinct sites for the Bears, none of them would affect the downtown area that could be key to the city’s rebirth. 

When the Bears purchased the old Arlington Park racing site, they acquired 326 acres in Arlington Heights. Gary is offering three possible sites for what it calls the Bears Stadium District, varying in size from 145 to 760 acres. 

The Buffington Harbor site is the closest to Chicago with 145 acres immediately north of Gary/Chicago International Airport. It’s expressway- and lakefront-adjacent, but would create a little urban island on a tract of land that offers no connections to the city’s fabric. 

The Gary West End site is a 400-acre tract along Interstate 80/94 and immediately east of the Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana and the forthcoming Lake County Convention Center. The casino is bereft of any architectural aspiration; many new warehouses along the interstate are more interesting. And this is likely Gary’s preferred site since it will add to these other entertainment uses. It’s also the only one of the three sites for which Gary has shown conceptual plans. But while the plans show an enticing mixed-use district with considerable density, there’s no connection to the existing portions of the city — and the interstate is likely to maintain that separation for decades to come. 

The Miller Beach site is touted for developing as much as 760 acres along the lakefront, but that includes about 100 acres that are part of Indiana Dunes National Park and should be untouchable for any development uses. This site might best re-create the sort of lakefront entertainment district that the Bears have previously proposed for the area near Soldier Field. But while Gary’s lakefront has long been the home of U.S. Steel’s Gary Works and other commercial ventures, it would be misguided to use this area for a stadium and associated amenities. As Chicagoans, we cherish our public lakefront, and we should encourage similar lakefront protections for future developments in Gary. 

The problem with the three peripheral sites is that there’s no there there. Gary should build on its urban strengths as a critical part of the city’s revival. The city is proposing a series of soulless and placeless places. 

Based on what it has shown to date, Gary seems uninterested in leveraging this project for any goal other than money. None of the sites create connections between Gary and the city’s existing and potential amenities; they are all chosen and presented as isolated locales where some nice 1960s-era stadium development is welcomed. These are pop-up mini insta-cities that have little to do with where they are and promote a moated/gated community for sports. And a full stadium will have an impact, approximately doubling the city’s population on a game day. 

Good urban development is about making connections, working with the fabric of what’s existing to extend the cityscape. What Gary needs is a revitalization of its urban core, centered around Broadway south of the Indiana Toll Road. 

Related Articles

Edward Keegan: West Side fresh market asks, ‘What would it look like if we actually got our 40 acres?’

Edward Keegan: Bruce Goff was not your typical architect

Edward Keegan: This year in Chicago architecture wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card

Edward Keegan: Robert A.M. Stern wrote 7,000 pages about New York architecture. Who can write Chicago’s tome?

Edward Keegan: Frank Gehry’s generous and democratic architecture

It’s fair to ask whether architecture or urban design is even part of the equation that the Bears are considering. The schemes we’ve seen so far for the stadium itself — and this includes Arlington Heights and the area adjacent to Soldier Field — are placeless and unlikely to change much regardless of the site eventually chosen. 

This is not how major projects — public or private — should be developed, whether it’s in Chicago, Gary or Arlington Heights. 

Is it too much to ask that the Bears be interested in the public good that architecture and urbanism can and should be? What, other than money, interests the Bears? Now 40 years removed from their last championship, it’s easy to argue that the franchise isn’t even all that interested in football. 

Gary needs investment and development, but none of the three Bears schemes promise more than isolated cash machines. The city needs to create economic activity at its urban core. This was a bustling and successful city in the middle years of the 20th century, before disinvestment and a post-industrial economy depleted the population. A new “entertainment district” including an NFL stadium could help revive the city’s fortunes, but as it stands, it’s looking in all the wrong places. 

Edward Keegan writes, broadcasts and teaches on architectural subjects. Keegan’s biweekly architecture column is supported by a grant from former Tribune critic Blair Kamin, as administered by the not-for-profit Journalism Funding Partners. The Tribune maintains editorial control over assignments and content.

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/02/08/column-chicago-bears-northwest-indiana-gary-keegan/