For the past four decades, far more Bears have hung their hats in Lake County, close to the team’s Halas Hall headquarters, than anywhere else.
The Chicago Bears practice on June 7, 2023, during organized team activities at Halas Hall in Lake Forest.
Throughout this process, one thing is certain: Where Bears players have chosen to live over the years largely correlates not with where their stadium is located, but where the team’s daily practices take place. For the past four decades, far more Bears have hung their hats and their helmets in homes in Lake County, close to the team’s Halas Hall headquarters and offices in western Lake Forest, than anywhere else.Lake County wasn’t always the Bears’ practice and office home.
Mike Ditka, who would go on to coach the Bears’ Super Bowl-winning team in 1985, owned a modest four-bedroom ranch in west suburban Lombard with his wife while a tight end for the Bears in the early 1960s, and he later owned a two-story house in Downers Grove in the late ‘60s and early 1970s, after he had begun playing for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys.
Former Bears tight end Emery Moorehead, who was part of the team’s Super Bowl victory in the 1985 season and played for the Bears from 1981 until 1988, later enjoyed a long second career as a real estate agent with Koenig & Strey Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. He said it’s logical for the players to want to live relatively close to the team’s practice facilities.
In 1997, the Bears built a new Halas Hall to replace their longtime outpost at Lake Forest College. The new Halas Hall, with indoor and outdoor training facilities, was located on 38 acres that the team had purchased just east of the Tri-State Tollway in western Lake Forest. The facility’s address initially was 1000 N. Field Drive, but the Bears soon changed it to 1920 Football Drive.
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