> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thestreatorstandard.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Bears, Hear Us Out: Streator Has Parking - URL: https://www.thestreatorstandard.com/f/bears-hear-us-out-streator-has-parking/ - Published: 2026-07-01T16:32:08.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-19T13:58:53.000Z - Author: The Streator Standard - Tags: Satire It is time for Streator to do what any confident and forward-thinking community must do when a professional football team starts flirting with Indiana. We should pitch ourselves as the new home of the Chicago Bears. Not because it makes sense. It does not. Streator does not have the infrastructure for an NFL stadium. We do not have the hotels, the roads, the airport, the passenger rail, the luxury accommodations, or the ability to move 70,000 people out of town at the same time after watching the Bears lose 17-13. We do not have a billion-dollar stadium authority. We do not have a shovel-ready entertainment district. We may not even have enough McDonald’s drive-thru capacity, especially if both lanes are open and somehow neither one is moving. But still. Indiana? If the Bears are seriously considering leaving Illinois for Indiana, then Streator has every right to throw its hat in the ring. At that point, the question is no longer whether the team belongs in Chicago. The question is how far the Chicago Bears can move from Chicago while still asking everyone to call them the Chicago Bears. Once that is the question, Streator belongs in the conversation. Are we too far away? Maybe. But Streator is near I-80, I-39 and I-55, which means a consultant with a laser pointer and a clean shirt could easily describe us as “strategically positioned between major transportation corridors.” That sentence alone has probably launched four empty business parks. Are we too small? Certainly. But smallness has never stopped a community from dreaming big, especially when the dream involves someone else’s money. Besides, the Bears only play eight or nine regular season home games a year. Streator has handled Cruise Night. Streator has handled Streatorfest. Streator has handled school pickup, road construction, and the sacred civic tradition of waiting in tenderloin-basket induced traffic jams. We understand congestion. The obvious location is Anderson Fields, if we want the practical pitch. It already sounds like a sports complex, which puts us ahead of half the consultants. But the bold pitch is Marilla Park. Marilla gives us room to dream. Room for tailgating. Room for overflow. Room for a stadium, a practice facility, a Bears Hall of Fame, a spaghetti and fried chicken pavilion, and at least one bronze statue of a quarterback who almost worked out. There are plenty to choose from. And if parking becomes a problem, we have what other communities lack. Cornfields. Other cities waste millions planning structured parking. Streator can offer agricultural overflow. Harvest-dependent parking. Seasonal parking. Parking with character. Parking where a fan from Naperville can step out of his SUV, look around at 80 acres of stubble, and say, “Honestly, this is still better than Soldier Field.” The lots name themselves. Blue Lot. Orange Lot. Soybean Lot. Uncle Randy’s Back Forty. Please Remember Where You Parked Lot. This is not a weakness. This is branding. Of course, the NFL will have questions. Where will visiting teams stay? This is where the plan becomes visionary. At first glance, Streator may not appear to have enough hotel rooms for two NFL teams, national media, corporate sponsors, broadcast crews, league officials, and thousands of fans who do not consider sleeping in a cousin’s camper behind the garage to be a formal lodging strategy. But that is old thinking. The Bears coming to Streator could finally unlock one of the great mysteries of modern local development: the long-awaited Northpoint hotel. For years, it has existed in that magical space between rumor, hope, site planning, and “I think I heard something about that.” Maybe an NFL stadium is the catalytic mixed-use hospitality driver needed to transform it from local legend into a building with towels. Until then, visiting teams can stay in Ottawa, Peru, Pontiac, Bloomington, Morris, or any Airbnb within 45 minutes that does not have too many decorative signs about wine. Consultants will call this a “distributed lodging ecosystem.” Everyone else will call it “staying with somebody’s uncle.” Where will fans eat? This may be the one part of the plan where Streator is overqualified. We have pizza, barbecue, tacos, bakeries, bars, burgers, coffee, slot machines, and enough breaded pork tenderloins to make the NFL reconsider its concussion protocol. The only real question is whether NFL fans are ready for a town where “concession expansion” means putting another roaster oven on the folding table. Where will the media go? Under a tent with Wi-Fi, folding chairs, and a long table borrowed from City Hall, a church basement, or somebody’s garage. That is how journalism is done now anyway. And the stadium itself should absolutely be called Hardscrabble Stadium, both because it honors Streator’s original name and because it accurately describes the life of a Bears fan. The team could enter through a tunnel shaped like a coal mine. The visiting team could enter through a door labeled “Pending Annexation.” The upper deck could be called Twister Hill. The club level could be called “People Who Still Believe.” The cheap seats could be called “Everyone We Know.” The design should honor Streator’s glassmaking past by making the whole stadium look like a giant bottle. Not a sleek modern bottle. A heavy old Streator bottle. Thick, stubborn, slightly green, and impossible to get rid of. That is our architectural language. Naturally, there would be concerns. Police staffing. Fire protection. Ambulance coverage. Water pressure. Traffic control. Road wear. Noise. Trash. Liability. Security. Whether Marilla Park was ever intended to become the center of the NFC North. These are all real issues. They are also exactly the kind of issues other communities would bury under words like “transformational,” “regional,” “catalytic,” and “mixed-use activation.” Streator can do better. We can be honest. No, we are not ready. No, it does not pencil out. No, the Bears are not moving here. No, the city should not mortgage its future to build a football palace between a park and a cornfield. But also, and this must be said with absolute seriousness: That is still not as strange as the Chicago Bears becoming an Indiana team. There is a point here, buried somewhere beneath the cornfield parking and imaginary tenderloin pavilion. A town like Streator should not chase every shiny object. We know too well what happens when communities are promised salvation from one big thing. A mine. A factory. A highway. A retailer. A development. A project. A rendering. One big thing rarely saves a place. Usually, a town is saved, if it is saved at all, by a thousand smaller things done stubbornly over time. Better parks. Better streets. Better buildings. Better housing. Better businesses. Better use of the river. Better care for what we already have. Better confidence in ourselves without needing a billionaire to validate us. Still, every now and then, it is healthy to be a little ridiculous. It is healthy to remember that Streator has assets. Land. Location. Parks. History. Parking. A river. A downtown with bones. A stubborn civic memory. A sense of humor. Enough open space to make bad ideas look briefly plausible. So yes, the Bears should take our call. We can show them Anderson Fields. We can show them Marilla Park. We can show them the cornfields. We can explain the interstate access. We can admit the hotel situation is not ideal, the Northpoint plan is doing whatever the Northpoint plan is doing, the sewer plan is theoretical, the traffic study would be hilarious, and the luxury accommodations may require a generous definition of luxury. Then we can look them directly in the eye and say: “But seriously. Indiana?” Bear Down. And please do not park in the beans.