It’s starting to look likely that the Chicago Fire could be on the move, but not too far.

Until Friday, talk about the ideas was largely coming from from supporter groups citing sources inside the organization.

The team has made no official statement, and neither any of the regular team beat writers nor any national writers had reported that this is happening.

And then, on Friday:

If you’ve been following the rumors you assumed this was coming.

The basics:

• The Fire are reportedly going to buy-out the city of Bridgeview for the remainder of their lease, which currently runs until 2036

• Under the current lease, the club needs permission from Bridgeview to play anywhere else

• The Fire would move back to Soldier Field (where they played from 2003-2006)

• There are, at this time, no plans to build a new stadium, but the Fire have been employing some real estate lobbyists (unclear if this has more to do with getting out of Bridgeview or into somewhere else)

So while I don’t have any official platform to share this on at the moment (new personal website in the works) I still wanted to share my thoughts.

The Stadium

Let’s start with the elephant in the room that is the stadium formerly known as Toyota Park. SeatGeek Stadium is in a terrible location; not easily accessible from the city due to the lack of public transportation (the “L” stops at Midway a 5-mile-drive away), nor much better coming from the suburbs with it being halfway between 55 and 294. The stadium is only in Bridgeview as a side effect of Chicago politics (it’s in the home district of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley).

It makes perfect sense that the team would want to get out of there. In the world of MLS, where money is at a premium, the money clubs make on game-day can be big for their bottom line. If you read Paul’s story, it won’t surprise anyone who’s watched any of the Fire’s three home games thus-far this season that they’re dead-last in attendance. People are money, and having the team play downtown would almost certainly mean more people.

As for what this would mean for SeatGeek Stadium, who knows. It would presumably continue to be the home of Chicago’s National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team, the Red Stars, but it’s uncertain if they’d be able to pay the bills by themselves. It makes sense for NWSL teams to tie themselves to MLS infrastructure, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Red Stars long-term plan was to follow the Fire wherever they eventually land.

Soldier Field

On the surface, the appeal of Soldier Field is obvious in comparison to SeatGeek. It’s adjacent to the Loop and Millenium and Grant Parks, thus is closer to the sorts of fan demographics (READ: young, soccer-interested millennials) the team has struggled to draw, and is used to being a soccer venue (it will host the CONCACAF Gold Cup final this summer and has hosted plenty of matches since the Fire left over a decade ago).

Soldier Field does, however, present one similar challenge to SeatGeek: public transit.

The nearest L stop is the Roosevelt stop on the Red Line, a 20-minute walk (which yes, is waaaay better than having to take the L to Midway and then a bus). I would just caution that moving to Soldier Field is not some sort of silver bullet that will save the club. I definitely think it will help, but if you think an empty soccer-specific stadium looks bad then you should see what an empty football stadium looks like:

Apologies to any New England fans out there…

MLS Commissioner Don Garber (who supports the club moving back to Soldier Field) has also been adamant that MLS teams need to be playing in soccer-specific stadiums. Which means a move to Soldier Field creates more questions than it answers.

New Stadium?

A couple years ago, many Chicago soccer fans were excited when they saw this picture:

That is a 20,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium that would have sat on Goose Island on the west side of Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood as part of the Lincoln Yards development.

Soon after, it was revealed that Chicago Cubs owner Tom Ricketts had purchased expansion rights for a United Soccer League (USL) franchise that would have theoretically played there. Despite that, there was hope in some circles that maybe one day such a stadium could be home for the Fire.

I am talking about all of this in the past tense, because it was announced in January that 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins was pulling his support for the stadium due to concerns about the traffic it would cause.

Now, I can understand concerns about traffic. However, anyone familiar with the adjacent stretch of 90/94 knows that traffic there is already horrible most of the time anyway. Seventeen soccer games over the course of seven or eight months is not going to make all that big a difference.

Welcome to Chicago, where because one guy (not even the mayor, although that’s how we got into this predicament but I digress) doesn’t see something in it for him there’s no stadium.

That all being as it is, both the Fire and MLS will want the Fire in a downtown soccer-specific stadium, and somewhere around Lincoln Yards makes a lot of sense. Chicago doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of open space or locations where traffic isn’t a concern.

But I think this is something that has to be taken one step at a time, and playing anywhere but Bridgeview would be a step in the right direction.

Beyond the Stadium

Again, moving the team into the city will not solve all the Fire’s problems. MLS is not a “build it and they will come” kind of league. It’s more of a “win a lot and they will come” or “make the club a community and they will come” league.

Anyone can do the former. The Fire even managed to fill the seats in the summer of 2017 when the team went on an 11-game unbeaten run. Look at Atlanta United (even though I’ll note them in the second category as well). 70,000 people aren’t showing up to watch a team lose in MLS.

The Fire have shown ambition in bringing players in like Bastian Schweinsteiger, Dax McCarty, Nemanja Nikolic, Przemyslaw Frankowski, and now Nicolas Gaitan in the pursuit of trying to win.

However, it hasn’t really worked.

There’s been little to no investment in defense or goalkeeper (though David Ousted looks like an excellent signing) and virtually no pipeline of homegrown talent (again, maybe just now starting to turn the tide with Djordje Mihailovic).

Injuries have also ravaged the roster over the past few seasons.

But there have been plenty of questionable decisions by the club that have led them to where they are. Letting go of Sean Johnson, trading David Accam, letting Jonathan Campbell and Matt Polster leave for nothing this offseason, losing homegrown prospect Andrew Gutman to Celtic. Particularly on defense, the path to this point is evident.

Even if Soldier Field represents greener pastures, it will be for nothing if the team continues to struggle.

If they can stay healthy, this team is built to score a ton of goals this season. The question is can they score more than they’ll concede, and can reinforcement be found for the defense?

Maybe a move can signal to the roster that the club is committed to addressing obvious problems, a philosophy they should apply more to the roster.

The other way to draw a crowd is build a culture. Seattle, Portland, Atlanta and now Cincinnati are all prime examples. However, this sort of culture is entirely organic, built up over years or even decades. That sort of thing can’t be manufactured.

That’s where the idea of a rebrand comes in.

The prototype of this is Sporting Kansas City, formerly the Kansas City Wizards. They made the switch in 2010, and a year later moved into a brand new soccer-specific stadium which is now regarded as one of the best atmospheres in MLS.

Personally, I don’t think changing the name is necessary. I don’t want to see a rebrand to some generic, European rip-off such as the ‘Chicago City Football Club’ idea that has been floated around. New badge? Color scheme adjustment? Fine, I think I’d be OK with that. There is a culture that has been built around the club’s most ardent supporters, and I think that has to be respected.

But what’s important is the way the club is marketed.

There are thousands of soccer fans in Chicago. There are a staggering amount of Premier League fans alone, plus an assortment of devotees to other European clubs. The city is investing in making soccer more accessible in poorer neighborhoods by constructing artificial futsal pitches in public parks. There is not excuse in a city of over 2 million people with the amount of soccer interest Chicago has to not be able to get 20,000 people to show up twice a month from spring until fall.

Even the White Sox, who went an abysmal 62-100 last year, drew an average of just under 20,000 fans per game. And they play most of their games on weeknights, also in a stadium not in the best location! We’re talking Saturday or Sunday afternoons for soccer.

This is possible, but only if done right.

Conclusion

I would be glad to see the Fire move out of SeatGeek Stadium. It holds the club back in a lot of ways, and a physical move would help the club reset its relationship with the city. It’s been encouraging to see the club adding more and more quality players, but there needs to be unified strategy in building this roster.

The club has never taken it’s relationship with the fans as seriously as it should, and I hope the reconciliation between the club and supporter groups, particularly Sector Latino and Section 8, can last and be a foundation on which to build a community around the club.

Soldier Field won’t be perfect, but it will be necessary and hopefully a bridge to a brighter future for the Fire on and off the field.

And I almost forgot my most important request: when the Fire eventually build a new stadium, it better have an indoor press box.