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Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf was disappointed when the White Sox settled for a Wild Card berth last season when their contention window finally opened after a painful but necessary rebuild.

Through a pool reporter Thursday, Reinsdorf talked to Chicago media for the first time in years after the Sox clinched the AL Central with a victory over the Indians in Game 1 of a split doubleheader in Cleveland.

“First of all, there’s a myth they had to talk me into it,” he said of the rebuild orchestrated by general manager Rick Hahn and vice president Ken Williams. “I wanted to do it just as much as they wanted to do it. It was an easy decision because we were going to be caught in mediocrity and that’s no fun. Going through it, it was painful watching the team lose [95 games in 2017 and 100 in 2018] but I always knew we had a plan and we were working our plan and ultimately the plan was going to work.”

The plan is to win multiple titles, Reinsdorf said. It won’t be easy.

“The real plan is we want to be competitive year after year,” Reinsdorf said. “It’s very hard to win one title, let alone multiple titles. I just want us to be playing meaningful games every October.”

Reinsdorf was criticized when he hired manager 76-year-old manager Tony La Russa, his friend who was fired by then GM Ken Harrelson in 1986, after the Sox lost the Wild Card series to the Athletics last season.

But Reinsdorf said La Russa’s gift for handling pitchers is what the Sox needed.

“I absolutely felt he was the best guy for the job,” Reinsdorf said. “I never had any doubt in my mind. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him for 10 years. I saw him, I talked to him. I knew what he had left. What I wanted was somebody that I felt could really handle the pitchers and can relate to the players and I knew Tony could do it.”

To which shortstop Tim Anderson confirmed again Thursday, calling La Russa “a great guy.”

“I’m just pleased with the way that he handled everything and the way he just come in and be a part of the family,” Anderson said.

Reinsdorf remained close to La Russa and knew he missed the competition.

“It killed him to be sitting in the stands or sitting in a suite watching the game,” Reinsdorf said. “That’s why I went to Rick and Kenny and said we should go after this guy.”

Reinsdorf, 85, remains passionate about baseball, his first love. He has one World Series title (2005) to go with six as chairman of the Bulls, and badly wants one more. He congratulated players and staff in the visitors clubhouse after the clincher.

“It’s always a great feeling when you win something,” he said.

“This is all about fans, and everybody associated with the organization. But first and foremost it’s about the fans and the fact we could win this championship, it means a lot. But now there’s a bigger prize and we hope we can bring that home to them.

“Our fans are probably the most knowledgeable fans in baseball. Much more knowledgeable than the fans of some other teams in the other league.”

Any team in the playoffs has a chance to win the World Series, Reinsdorf said, and Sox fans deserve to have their patience rewarded with another one.

“In a short series anything can happen,” he said. “I don’t see why we can’t go all the way, but if we don’t, I wouldn’t be stunned either.”

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There were no big yardage totals or pretty offensive plays to rave about in Mather’s 15-14 win against Hyde Park on Thursday at Winnemac.

It was a game of defense and penalties that was decided by the sheer will of sophomore Jacob Scott and the Rangers’ offensive line and defense.

The Thunderbirds (4-1) entered the game undefeated, on top of the Illini Big Shoulders conference. They received votes in the Associated Press Class 4A state poll this week, technically making them the No. 13 ranked Class 4A team in the state.

But none of those numbers mattered in the final push. Mather’s offense had not done much through three quarters, but it managed to drive down to just inches short of the goal line with 2:27 to play, trailing 14-7.

On fourth-and-goal the teams collided. Rangers quarterback Zeke Irving attempted to punch it in. Seven of his teammates collided with nine Hyde Park players and the battle was on. The Rangers won as Irving stayed on his feet and made it into the end zone.

That made it 14-13. Mather (4-1) had easily made the extra point on its touchdown in the third quarter, a three-yard run by sophomore Jacob Scott. This time the Rangers went for two and the win out of necessity. Their only long snapper was now out injured.

Scott craftily crashed and snuck his way through Hyde Park’s size advantage to give his team the lead and the win.

“I was scared if I didn’t score I would let my team down,” Scott. “It was challenging. They are pretty big. I had good blocking thanks to my offensive line and I didn’t give up and they didn’t give up. We kept fighting.”

Scott had 25 carries for 66 yards and a touchdown. Irving was 6-for-9 passing for 62 yards.

Junior Terence Young had an interception and key knockdown for the Rangers. Senior John Ho came through with an interception on Hyde Park’s final drive to seal the victory.

“I locked it down,” Young said. “They ran trips, which was real bold and they didn’t get anything with it.”

Hyde Park quarterback Quentin Harris was 8-for-18 for 136 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions. Running back Jaylin Ramseur had 17 carries for 69 yards.

“We came out flat,” Hyde Park coach Keenan Phillips-Riley said. “I think we probably underestimated our opponent.”

A Mather football player lays injured on the field as coaches and a referee look on during the game against Hyde Park. Kirsten Stickney/For the Sun-Times

There were only four officials and no trainer at the game. Several Mather players left the game with injuries and Hyde Park asked for a trainer in the first half.

“Last week we just had three refs,” Mather coach Yanko Jordanof said. “I grew up in CPS and we didn’t have trainers. Rub some dirt in it, put some ice on it. Next man up.

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When Christa Hamilton walked through the doors of UCAN Chicago (Ulrich Children’s Advantage Network) last week, she became the first African American and first woman to lead one of Chicago’s oldest social service agencies.

Founded as a Civil War orphanage, the 152-year-old North Lawndale organization serves more than 21,000 youth who have suffered trauma, either wards of the state or in the larger community, with a dozen programs supporting youth and families on the West Side and South Side.

Raised in Englewood, Hamilton feels an intrinsic connection to clients served by UCAN in communities impacted by poverty and crime. She was the first in her family to attend college. But now the 40-year-old is a star in the social services sphere.

“In the social services world, UCAN is a big deal. I’m extremely honored to be the person to pivot the history here,” said Hamilton.

“I’m grateful we have a board of directors bold enough to change the trajectory of the leadership and make it reflective of both the community that we serve and our workforce.”

She comes to the role after serving as CEO of Centers for New Horizons for seven years, passed the baton by that 50-year-old organization’s founder and education pioneer Dr. Sokoni Karanja in 2014. She joined Centers in 2011, previously managing its workforce development programs.

Under Hamilton’s leadership, Centers significantly expanded its programming, doubling its budget and staff — from $8 million to $18 million, and from 150 employees to more than 300.

“The services UCAN provides align with what I have done at Centers, the programs that I grew. So I felt qualified to lead this organization into its next chapter,” Hamilton said.

“Understanding its long history — 152 years of not having a woman or African American at the helm — I thought if any time was a great time to be in this position, that time would be now,” she said.

Casting a social safety net long before its more famous peer, the 132-year-old Jane Addams Hull House, UCAN, with a $46 million budget and 650 employees, originally was based on Chicago’s Northwest Side.

It relocated in 2015, building its $43 million, 7-acre Drost-Harding Campus at 3605 W. Fillmore, where it operates the 70-room Diermeier Therapeutic Youth Home for troubled wards.

The agency provides foster and teen parenting programs; transitional, independent living and other housing support; workforce and youth development programs. It runs two therapeutic day schools in Beverly and Humboldt Park.

Its sprawling North Lawndale campus has become a community anchor, with more than 80 groups using meeting space at its Nichols Center headquarters.

UCAN was founder of the North Lawndale Athletic and Recreation Association — community organizations collaborate to provide sports and extracurricular activities for neighborhood youth at its Arthur L. Turner Gymnasium.

And the campus hosts the Circuit Court of Cook County’s lauded Restorative Justice Community Court. First of its kind in Illinois, the initiative weekly brings nonviolent crime victims face-to-face with offenders to work out a resolution in a peace circle.

“Our Governing Board unanimously voted to appoint Christa Hamilton president and CEO. We firmly believe we have chosen the right executive leader for UCAN at the right time, given her demonstrated success as a nonprofit professional and career as a leader who is adept at addressing community needs and program efficiency,” said UCAN Board Chair Markell Bridges.

Hamilton, who holds an M.B.A., spent six years in management at Walgreens corporation, then three years as a workforce consultant with the U.S. Department of Labor, before feeling called to transition into nonprofit work.

“We are proud that Christa is the first African American and first woman to lead UCAN in our esteemed history,” Bridges said. “We believe her appointment is a significant milestone.”

A resident of Chatham and mother of two, Hamilton succeeds Thomas Vanden Berk, UCAN’s president of 28 years, who has served in an interim capacity since December.

Hamilton is zeroing in on violence intervention and prevention programs run by UCAN in North Lawndale and Roseland — two of 15 Chicago communities that account for 50 percent of the city’s gun violence.

Combating that violence is personal for her. Hamilton’s 21-year-old nephew, Jonathan Johnson, was murdered in Englewood in 2014.

“UCAN’s violence prevention programs are what pulls my heartstrings. When my nephew was killed, I saw how it tore our family apart. So I’m laser-focused on violence. I’ve lived through it and the trauma that comes after you leave the gravesite,” she said.

“My vision is: How do I lead in a way that can possibly reduce this violence, that can possibly stop other families from having to deal with the grief we went through?”

The nonprofit leader believes much of Chicago’s violence can be traced to lack of opportunities in those communities.

In North Lawndale, for example, nearly half the population lives below federal poverty level, and its 15.9 percent unemployment rate is double the city average, which doesn’t include the whopping 46 percent of its population considered out of the workforce.

“North Lawndale has high rates of crime and unemployment, and those are two areas that I spent the last five years of my life focusing on,” said Hamilton.

“Ultimately, the people I’ve met who are participating in antisocial or criminal behavior, they want the same things that we want. But they have behaviors that they need to unlearn. That’s where UCAN steps in,” she said.

“When you give them employment opportunities and mental health support, they can ultimately go on to become very productive members of society,” the millennial added.

“I have met too many young people that have been perpetrators of violence, and I have seen many of them change. So I know it can be done. But it really will take relentless engagement on behalf of organizations like UCAN that are out here doing the work.”

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A 29-year-old man was fatally shot Thursday in Lawndale on the West Side.

About 5:20 p.m., he was standing near the sidewalk in the 2200 block of South Kolin Avenue, when he was approached by a man who pulled out a gun and fired shots, Chicago police said.

He was struck in the chest, and taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. He has not yet been identified.

A person of interest was taken into custody for questioning, police said.

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Amid everything the Bears are navigating as they change quarterbacks, reshuffle the defense and prepare for a road game against one of the NFL’s better teams, they’ve been devoting a portion of their week toward something ridiculous.

In a sport that asks players to break their bodies for every momentous yard, they can lose 15 of them just for clapping. The NFL’s new taunting policy demands that in the most vicious sport, players walk away from the play as though they’re in a library, and the Bears were flagged for violating it in each of their first two games.

Given the nature of football — the physical toll it takes and the dedication of an entire week to get everything perfect on Sunday — it’s unfair and unrealistic.

It’s also unnecessary.

“If you play in between the whistles — hey, he made a good play,” Bears linebacker Roquan Smith said when asked if he thinks taunting is a problem. “I’m going to come back and get him if he does make a good play on me.”

And has an opponent’s taunt ever hurt your feelings?

“Aw, hell no!” Smith snapped.

That seems like a silly question. But if players aren’t complaining about bruised egos, here’s what should really be asked: Who is this rule for?

It’s clearly not for the players, and NFLPA president J.C. Tretter pointed out this week that the league’s competition committee, which implements rules like this, consists of 10 members chosen by commissioner Roger Goodell and one rep from the union.

The rule likely is meant to appease prudish fans who view the game as out of control and wild when players get into it. But this supposed misbehavior is negligible.

There were eight taunting penalties in the first two weeks, and three occurred in Bears games:

– Linebacker Alec Ogletree got one in the opener for standing over Rams right guard Austin Corbett after they tangled at the end of a play. That moved the Rams from midfield into scoring range.

– The refs flagged safety Tashaun Gipson for clapping at wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase after a stop on third-and-five, handing the Bengals a new set of downs.

– Bengals safety Vonn Bell picked one up minutes later for jawing at quarterback Andy Dalton, bailing the Bears out of what would’ve been third-and-12 backed up against their own end zone. Dalton appeared to lobby for the flag, presumably because they’d just penalized Gipson.

Several Bears said during the week they aren’t clear on what meets the threshold for a penalty, don’t agree with the spirit of the policy and don’t think 15 yards is an appropriate punishment. The overly heavy-handed discipline will tamp down some of the emotion and excitement of the game, and Bears wide receiver Marquise Goodwin believes that’s ultimately bad for the league.

“The gestures, clapping in the face and doing all of that — my skin’s too thick for that,” Goodwin said. “That doesn’t really get me going. I’m kind of confused by the rules, but it is the league’s rule.”

That last part means players have to take it seriously regardless of whether they agree with the league. If it can cost them a possession — or even a game — they must abide by it. That’s the point coach Matt Nagy, who agrees wholeheartedly with the intention of the rule, has been stressing.

“Guys are competitive and they’re emotional… but we’re also teaching everybody to move on to the next play,” Nagy said. “When that’s the rules, I listen to them and I believe in them.

“If you think it’s gray at all, you can’t do it — because that can be critical. I understand why the league’s doing it and I support it and I’m going to do everything I can to emphasize it.”

That’s a lot of effort over a rule that never should’ve been implemented.

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A 17-year-old boy was shot Thursday in Chatham on the South Side.

About 4:25 p.m., he was inside a vehicle in the 8400 block of South Holland Road, when he was struck by gunfire, Chicago police said.

He was shot in the thigh, and taken to Provident Hospital, where he is in good condition, police said.

No arrest have been made, police said.

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On the day he died, Simeon High School freshman Kentrell McNeal and a friend went to play some basketball at a gym intended to be a safe space for kids.

But it was filled to capacity, so they went to watch a football game instead and ended up in Hyde Park, where the boys were ambushed in a McDonald’s parking lot and shot Tuesday evening.

Kentrell, 15, died the next day. The 14-year-old with him was seriously wounded.

“They’re not wrong for going to a school football game. They’re kids being kids,” said Carlil Pittman, executive director of the youth group Good Kids Mad City.

Just hours earlier, another Simeon student, Jamari Williams, also 15, was shot and killed minutes after school let out in Chatham. He was on the junior varsity football team and, like Kentrell, had used sports as a refuge from the violence around him.

“When we talk about safe spaces and opportunities for youth, this is exactly what we’re trying to prevent,” Pittman said. “There’s not always the luxury in our communities for children to be children. And the space forces them to be in adult situations at such a young age.”

Shattered dreams

Jamari Williams excelled at sports and dreamed of playing professionally.

“He was a good kid,” said Darryl Smith, who coached Jamari for three years on the Ogden Park Vikings football team.

“He wanted to play a sport he loved. He was one of the fastest kids on the team. His aspirations were to get out, play football and make it to the next level,” Smith said.

“That was his dream,” he said. “But unfortunately his dreams were shattered.”

Jamari lost his father to gun violence within the last year. Smith said the middle school football program was intended to help the children grow into adulthood.

Before every practice, he’d make sure the kids finished their homework before suiting up.

“It gives them a foothold in life,” he explained. “We try to instill discipline in them, instill some kind of work ethic and get them ready for the next stage in their lives, which is high school.”

‘A super group’

Kentrell belonged to a unique basketball program that combined an existing team, Geek Squad Basketball, with guidance from Good Kids Mad City.

“It was like a super group,” Kentrell’s coach Ro Gordon said.

“People looked for [Kentrell] for advice and motivation. I have no doubts that he had a prominent future in coaching. He leaves behind a lot of little brothers in Geek Squad,” Gordon said.

Pittman, the head of Good Kids Mad City, had a child in the basketball program in a younger age group and volunteered to mentor the other kids.

That mentorship extended beyond the biweekly practices and games that took them outside of Chicago. “On these trips, they not only played basketball and traveled the world, they were able to get educated,” Gordon said.

Pittman said the program trained kids in solving problems and taught them building skills.

“They’d always come to my house, or we’d go out of town for basketball games together,” Pittman said. “Kentrell used to come over and play games with the other boys. It was just a pleasure to have him around and get to know him better.”

Kentrell had celebrated his 15th birthday three days before the shooting.

“Around me, all he talked about was basketball. If he wasn’t playing and my son was playing somewhere, he’d call and say, ‘Can I go?’ For him, he was just enjoying his friends and embarking on his journey as a freshman in high school,” Pittman said.

Pastor Charles Moodie provided the court used by Kentrell and his team at Chicago City Life Center, near State and Garfield. He said Kentrell as a “very funny kid” with a “huge heart.”

Moodie’s church holds late night tournaments from 6 p.m. until midnight to give kids a safe place away from the streets.

“It was just a positive thing — a space for them to dream about college,” Moodie said. “It’s just sad to see great potential being taken.”

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Jonathan Toews spent much of the last year feeling more like an astronaut than a hockey player.

“It was just a lot of things coming unglued — the normal routine, the normal people you’re surrounded by, the usual things you expect out of yourself,” Toews said Thursday, quietly but honestly, after the Blackhawks’ first day of training camp.

“We all have habits and routines every day that we rely on to find some sense of normalcy and consistency in our lives. And when none of that was there, you kind of feel like you’re in outer space sometimes.”

Over the past few months, though, Toews has finally felt himself coming back to earth.

Some of the things the 33-year-old captain experienced regularly for more than a decade returned again Thursday: the quiet of the locker room in the morning, the excitement and nervousness for day one, the huffing and puffing during end-of-practice laps.

His body feels closer to normal, too. Despite skating informally at Fifth Third Arena for the past several weeks, an official practice represented a step up in intensity, and Toews finished it pleased with how it went.

“As dog-tired as I was out there today, it’s a good feeling,” he said. “Instead of, ‘OK, I’m in trouble; I’m going to be up on the couch for two days doing nothing.’ So to me, that’s progress… [I’m] just feeling a lot better.”

The medical details of Toews’ health issues over the past year — of exactly what left him feeling “drained and lethargic” enough to miss an entire season — are tough to nail down.

He said in a brief video in June he’d been diagnosed with chronic immune response syndrome (CIRS), a condition about which little information exists. He said Thursday he believes COVID-19 aftereffects impacted him, as well; he never tested positive for the virus, but did for antibodies later on.

But even as he slowly re-enters the spotlight, Toews remains clearly reluctant to make his story be about either COVID or CIRS specifically.

“It’s never that simple,” he said. “My health kind of hit a wall, and a lot of things add up to that… The last 10-plus years here in Chicago have gone by in a flash because it’s been one thing, all the time. That adds up. It takes a toll on you in a lot of ways: mentally, physically and emotionally.

“It was good for me to check out, and try and pick the pieces back up and come back to the game with a new approach and a new appreciation for it.”

The team was understandably thrilled by Toews’ return. Patrick Kane mentioned missing Toews’ strength on the puck and ability to fight off defenders along with his presence off the ice.

But many young Hawks don’t actually know their captain that well. Some have never played with him at all before.

“After a year off, you’re coming into a new team,” Kane said.

“It’s definitely a weird dynamic that I’ve thought about,” Toews said. “[I’m] not trying to come in and do too much and take [it all] on my shoulders. [I will] try to make some of these new guys feel included, so they don’t have to walk on eggshells in that locker room. This is their room, so…we can all kind of feed off each other that way.”

As far as his own preparation, Toews has a ways to go. He’s still “chipping away” at his conditioning and working to get hockey to “slow down” in his mind like it used to.

At least there’s a timeline in place now, though. He admitted Thursday his goal is to play in the Oct. 13 season opener. He and everyone else will find out over the next three weeks whether that’s actually possible.

“I’m just taking one day at a time,” he added. “That’s all I can really handle right now.”

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CLEVELAND — They didn’t sprint in from the outfield, dash across the diamond or spill out of the dugout and bullpen in a hurly-burly blur.

They didn’t even jog.

Let the record show that when White Sox closer Liam Hendriks struck out the Indians’ Myles Straw here Thursday to nail down a 7-2 victory that clinched a division title, the American League Central champs barely moved a muscle. Hendriks went a little nuts, sure, but he rolls out of bed like that.

“I really like the fact that I was able to blow someone’s doors off for the final out,” he said.

But the rest of the team? They kind of just ambled.

Catcher Yasmani Grandal met Hendriks halfway between the mound and the plate, where a routine congratulatory exchange got the job done. Middle infielders Tim Anderson and Cesar Hernandez had a brief moment by second base. Corner infielders Yoan Moncada and Jose Abreu shuffled toward each other like college buddies at a 50th reunion. The dugout emptied as if in slow motion. Outfielders and relievers straggled in like it was any old day at all.

By God, it was perfect.

The Sox have qualified for a second straight postseason for the first time ever. They have their first division title since 2008. They have all the reason in the world to cut loose … a few weeks from now when they’ve clinched a divisional series. They can skitter around the field deliriously … when they’ve won the AL pennant. As for the World Series, well, let the final out then lead to the mother of all dogpiles.

But the 2021 Sox were too obviously good, too talented, too stacked not to get to this point. They haven’t done a dang thing yet.

“We all understand this is just a start,” Anderson said. “We’re going to celebrate this and put it behind us and keep it moving, keep pushing, and hopefully we can do something special.”

To get to all that, though, the Sox had to bring themselves to a boil so they could win a game on this wet, cold, gray road trip that sure has an October feel — weather-wise, not drama-wise — to it.

Enter Anderson, who put the Sox on the board and gave them a spark with a leadoff homer against Aaron Civale. The player manager Tony La Russa refers to as the team’s “ignitor” traded customary hand slaps with first-base coach Daryl Boston and third-base coach Joe McEwing. He was greeted at home plate by No. 2 hitter Moncada and near the on-deck circle by Abreu. He was met at the top step of the dugout by La Russa and then traveled the length of the dugout, slapping and bumping through a phalanx of fired-up teammates and coaches until there was only Billy Hamilton left to greet him. They hugged.

Sox emotion poured into the second inning, when Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez bombed away with back-to-back homers to left. In the dugout, Anderson danced. Back at the plate with two on, Anderson hit another one out to right. This time, he slide-stepped his way from third to home, facing the dugout and pointing at his teammates with both hands.

“We wanted it more than them,” he said, “and it showed.”

Now, it has to keep showing.

“Here we are, the division champs,” La Russa said.

“One thing you experience over the years: winning never gets old. It gets better. It just gets better because you appreciate more what everybody had to do to get here. And that’s the message for all the guys, [especially] the first-timers: It gets better. In fact, it can get better this year.”

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Nothing short of a new, preferably domed, stadium — either in parking lots next to Soldier Field or at McCormick Place East — will prevent the Bears from moving to Arlington Heights, a sports marketing expert said Thursday.

Chicagoan Marc Ganis has advised numerous NFL teams on their stadium financing. He has closely followed the Bears stadium saga for decades, including former team president Michael McCaskey’s flirtations with sites in Gary, Indiana, Hoffman Estates, the Near West Side and the ill-fated McDome project adjacent to McCormick Place.

Ganis said the “economics of the NFL” have “changed dramatically” in the two decades since Chicago chose what was then the political path of least resistance — renovating Soldier Field at a cost of $660 million — which won’t be paid off until 2032.

That’s why he believes the Bears’ bid for the Arlington International Racecourse property in Arlington Heights will be a prelude to building a new stadium there — unless Mayor Lori Lightfoot can find the public money and summon the political will to build a new stadium in Chicago.

Another renovation is not enough, he said.

“Short of creating a domed type of project, which would be a new facility in that same general area with public sector support because of increased costs, I don’t see how there’s a long-term solution along the lakefront,” Ganis said Thursday.

“It wouldn’t really matter that much if the mayor said you could do naming rights. You could do gambling. And you can have more advertising. You can put in more events. The building itself was economically obsolete before the concrete dried.”

Among the ideas floated in the past for a new Bears stadium was this 2001 concept from the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois for a retractable-dome stadium on the parking lot just north of what is now Guaranteed Rate Field, home of the White Sox.Sun-Times file

Ganis said Los Angeles Rams’ CEO Stan Kroenke recently took him on a tour of $5.5 billion SoFi Stadium.

“It’s spectacular. We’re not gonna build something like that here. But the Bears, for their future, need something significantly better. And it just isn’t gonna happen within the colonnades of Soldier Field,” he said.

Ganis pegged the cost of a new stadium on the racecourse property at roughly $2 billion.

How could a team that’s essentially a McCaskey family business — exception for the 19.6% share owned by Patrick Ryan and Andy McKenna — afford that?

“The NFL will participate for a very significant amount of money. Multiple hundreds of millions for a new stadium. And the Bears will sell seat licenses. In L.A., the Rams’ seat licenses generated over $600 million,” Ganis said.

“And then, you’ve got all of the revenue streams you don’t have at Soldier Field with a stadium that’s designed to maximize revenue streams along with other events that may take place. And real estate development that makes sense to take place around the stadium as they’re doing in L.A. and in other markets.”

Earlier this week, Lightfoot said she wants the Bears to stay in Chicago and will work with the team she loves to expand and improve Soldier Field and maximize year-round revenues, but in a “fiscally-prudent way that doesn’t preclude other uses.”

The Bears opened their renovated Soldier Field with a game against the Green Bay Packers on Sept. 29, 2003.AFP/Getty Images

But two architects who worked on the renovation and a structural engineer familiar with the project told the Sun-Times the mayor’s hands may be tied by the constraints of a lakefront seating bowl towering over historic colonnades at a stadium that’s also a war memorial.

Chicago architects Dirk Lohan and Adrian Smith said the current 61,500 capacity — the NFL’s smallest — can be expanded only a little, and only in the end zones. A retractable roof would be difficult, requiring a new support structure.

Ganis agrees. He’s already moving on to talk of possible sites for a new lakefront stadium.

Besides the parking lots, “they’re still trying to figure out what to do with the McCormick Place [East] building that’s almost never used. So there is land there to do it. But whether there’s a desire to is another question,” he said.

McCormick Place East (center front), also known as the Lakeside Center, is the oldest and least-used part of the convention center. It’s a logical site for a new Bears stadium to replace nearby Soldier Field (far right), said sports consultant Marc Ganis.Sun-Times file

Stadium “choices” and mistakes made decades ago have limited the mayor’s options, Ganis said.

“So if you’re asking me, as a person who’s worked on so many of these deals, ‘Is there a viable, advantageous way to extend the term at Soldier Field?,’ my response would be, ‘Not really.’ I would be quite pessimistic about that. Is there an opportunity to increase those odds to keep the team within that general area? Yes, but that would entail doing something that was proposed decades ago and shelved,” he said.

Bears spokesman Scott Hagel could not be reached for comment. The mayor’s office had no immediate comment. Asked about Lakeside Center as a stadium site, Cynthia McCafferty, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns McCormick Place, said: “Any decision of that nature would have to be made by our board of directors.”

Ganis said the only other site that would make sense for a new stadium would be the old U.S. Steel South Works site — a long haul for the Bears’ fan base.

“Arlington Park is an excellent site for the future of the Bears. It fits their ticket demographics,” he said.

“It fits for the access — both by mass transit and by roads. It is a site people are used to going to. And it’s available. That, in and of itself, is not an insignificant matter. And it’s used to having tens of thousands of people go to that site on a regular basis.”

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