Editorial: The Bears have yet to say why they need the lakefront. Why even think of saying yes without that?

In 2014, a task force set up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel recommended a lakefront site for what then was known as the Lucas Cultural Arts Museum. By turning parking lots south of Soldier Field and north of McCormick Place Lakeside into a world-class tourist attraction, the task force said in its report, the result would be “a new jewel in Chicago’s crown of iconic sites.”

George Lucas’ fully funded museum, which any fool could see was destined to be one of the most important curated collections of American art on the planet, not only would fit perfectly with the Museum Campus but would have elevated the nearby institutions by its very existence. Chicago would have had a cultural district like no other.

“Planting a museum in the parkland along Chicago’s waterfront seemed as natural an act, for most of its history, as planting a tree there,” reported the British newspaper The Guardian in 2016, utterly bemused at the power of the anti-Lucas forces. “That city’s breathtaking waterfront parks are host to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Museum of Science and Industry — a solid majority of the city’s premier cultural institutions.”

Exactly. We now can add the Obama Presidential Center. That got far more hassle than it deserved, too.

Obama prevailed but Lucas walked away. Somehow, his audacious philanthropic act became perceived not as a potential “Bilbao effect” for Chicago (a reference to the huge gains made by that industrial Spanish city after the creation of an iconic Frank Gehry-designed museum) but as a hubristic private quest, which was absurd. The great filmmaker and new Chicagoan, who often talked about his spiritual affinity for water, became so frustrated by the lawsuits and roadblocks thrown his way, he decamped for California with his wife, Mellody Hobson, a woman who had given the city so much. And thus the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art now is set to open in 2025 near the Pacific Ocean. Instead of on Lake Michigan.

In the old Lucas Museum spot, Chicago now seriously contemplates a football stadium that (a) is not fully funded by a private donor and requires $1 billion or more in supplementary public investment; (b) has no obvious organic relationship to its surroundings, especially given its proposed dome, shutting out the natural world; (c) is set to massively disrupt the operations of its culturally oriented neighbors on an ongoing basis; and (d) is likely to impel the gutting of historic Solider Field, an imperfectly renovated but still viable venue for international soccer and concerts even on the scale of Taylor Swift. By comparison, the Lucas ask was minuscule.

Yet despite all of those negatives, it looks like the increasingly cozy relationship between Mayor Brandon Johnson and Bears CEO Kevin Warren makes this a distinct possibility; the Bears reportedly already have begun meeting with the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority, trying to snag a share of the hotel tax for a stadium expected to cost as much as $3 billion. Perhaps on the theory that a smart negotiator always pitches something it is willing to give up, the Bears even have proposed sticking a lakefront hotel there, too. Simply put, agreeing to this site will turn the museum district into a sports and entertainment district, not that different from the new Allegiant Stadium and its surroundings in Las Vegas.

This is such a complicated issue, especially given the Bears’ continued flirtation with Arlington Heights, their apparent backup if Chicago does not play ball, that we think Chicagoans and Illinoisans need to think hard about several distinct questions. Those include what they want Soldier Field to become for future generations, how much money (if any) they want to give a privately owned NFL franchise and whether they’d like a voter referendum on that delicate matter (Kansas City voters just told the Chiefs no cigar for their big fiscal stadium ask).

Add to those issues what the ownership structure of a new stadium should be and, of course, the crucial aesthetics of any new stadium and its immediate surroundings. Some domed stadiums are far nicer than others. We expect to weigh in several times as matters develop.

But, aside from our serious concerns over the appalling lack of transparency as this whole situation progresses, today we’ve got one central, existential question for Warren, Johnson and the McCaskey family, majority owners of the Bears.

Why does this new stadium have to be on our precious lakefront?

Without an adequate answer to that, all the rest should be moot. And, no, such answers as “we’re already familiar with Soldier Field” or “we like the prestige” will not suffice.

What, for example, is wrong with the long-dormant Michael Reese Hospital site (now marketed as “Bronzeville Lakefront”) just a few blocks to the west and without all the pesky lakefront protections? Not long ago, we thought that land good enough for a potential Chicago Olympics. Or even The 78, a crucial connection between downtown and Bronzeville? (That’s assuming the White Sox’s request for a new stadium on that golden piece of property without investing a dime of their own money isn’t getting policymakers excited.) Or somewhere else on the investment-starved West or South sides of this big, lumbering city with more than its share of vacant lots?

All of the above would offer a better case for public investment. And, by the way, there’s no waterfront in Arlington Heights, which appeared to be fine for the Bears just a few months ago.

Most Chicagoans, and we are no different, would like to see the Bears remain in Chicago, and many of us even recognize their need for the kind of new, climate-controlled stadium that might bring a Super Bowl to the city, even as we see a lot of life left in Soldier Field. But, we ask again, why does a new Bears stadium have to be on a lakefront that no one attending a game is going to see or enjoy with the lid closed or while inside some hermetically sealed corporate box?

Sure, times change, what’s done is done and probably a few other cliches apply here. But let’s be clear: We turned down one project that would have brought in far more tourists and economic development dollars than a replacement NFL stadium and that would have complemented the cultural institutions that already sit in our vaunted lakefront parkland. A new Bears stadium there will cause a bucketload of chaos.

So, why? Mr. Warren? Mr. Mayor?