How one Indiana city went from skeptical to serious contender for Bears' new stadium

When the Chicago Bears kick off against the Minnesota Vikings for their 2026 home opener on Sunday, it will mark the start of their 55th season at Soldier Field.

It also may be the last.

Hammond, Indiana, certainly hopes it is.

The Bears announced in June that they were moving forward with stadium development plans across state lines in Hammond, Indiana.

This isn’t the first time the Bears have talked about moving to Indiana, as there were discussions in the late 1990s, but none were serious.

Now? The discussions are as serious as Ben Johnson saying he wants the Bears to have the highest-scoring offense in NFL history.

Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said that while the city has been preparing for this, even he didn’t think the work would eventually lead to Hammond potentially becoming the next home of the Bears.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE OUTKICK SPORTS COVERAGE "We did a lot of things in Hammond and in Indiana to prepare us for this day," McDermott told OutKick in a recent interview.

"But you know, I'd be lying to you if I told you I thought that when we were doing this, I thought we'd be the future home of the Chicago Bears." The Bears completed their review of the Lost Marsh site in Hammond while also doing their due diligence on the Lake Terminal site.

McDermott said those potential sites for a stadium came to be through efforts to clean up the area.

"The site that we're talking about right now, if you were looking at it when I first took over, it was I don't think the Bears would have even thought it was possible to locate a stadium there because there was so many different landowners. it was underutilized and it was just old-fashioned, old thinking," McDermott said.

"For the first two or three terms, in cooperation with the state government, we started assembling dozens and dozens of acres and we got it to where we have about 300 acres available." But even throughout the process of assembling the acreage, it was never done with the thought the it could one day be the home of the Bears.

"I'll be honest with you, never in a million years did I think that we'd one day be the home—the future home of the Chicago Bears.

We were just doing it to clean up and hoping that good things would happen and improve the quality of life," McDermott said.