Chicago White Sox looking to replace Guaranteed Rate Field

The Chicago White Sox are looking to move into a new home built for the 21st century.

According to a report from the Chicago Sun-Times, the White Sox are in talks to develop a new baseball stadium in what's considered a prime real estate location, a South Loop area called "The 78." A joint statement from White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf and Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson said  that "we met to discuss the historic partnership between the team and Chicago and the team’s ideas for remaining competitive in Chicago in perpetuity.”

Chicago's South Side team has played at Guaranteed Rate Field since it opened as the "new" Comiskey Park in 1991. It was actually the first new sports venue to be built in the city since Chicago Stadium opened in the late 1920s, a stunning fact when considering that other cities around the United States had either built entirely new buildings or renovated existing ones in those six decades. The ballpark opened just before Baltimore's Camden Yards and Cleveland's Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field) sparked new trends in stadium design as nearly every team in Major League Baseball hounded their municipalities for similar new construction.

Guaranteed Rate Field had been viewed as obsolete within a few years of its opening, and despite the White Sox ending their World Series drought more than a decade (2005) before the Cubs did (2016), the relative lack of success since then didn't exactly build a groundswell of support to once again renovate, if not outright replace the ballpark.

This isn't the first time that the Sox have played stadium games in the modern era as it was in negotiations to move to the Tampa Bay area before the new Comiskey was approved by both local and state governments. However, with Johnson now several months into his first year as Chicago's mayor, it appeared that Reinsdorf sensed a new opportunity to build a partnership with City Hall in order to get a new stadium.

The Sun-Times story delves into the history of the potential stadium site, one that mirrors some of the same developmental challenges as other sites around the country, especially the Brooklyn Nets' Barclays Center, which sits on land that the Dodgers wanted before they moved to Los Angeles.

Of course, the Sox aren't the only team in Chicago looking for new digs as the Bears will also test the public's collective attitude about taxpayer funds being devoted to two separate sports projects.