The White Sox have played at 35th and Shields since 1991, but the renderings that dropped this week show a version of the franchise most fans never thought they'd get to see. Justin Ishbia, the team's minority owner who's positioned to take full control of the club, put his development company's name behind a proposal for a stadium along the Chicago River in the South Loop, and the pictures are the kind that make a fan base that's been starved for good news do a double take.
Congratulations to Chicago White Sox fans. You've apparently died, gone to heaven, and been reincarnated into a completely different baseball organization. These new South Loop renderings from Aecom, the engineering firm Justin Isbia's tabbed with the redevelopment look incredible. And soooooo needed for downtown Chicago and the loop.
The plan is called The Railyards, and it would turn a 47-acre Amtrak rail yard running from Roosevelt Road down to 18th Street into a year-round riverfront district, not just a game-day stop. The site sits directly across the water from The 78, where the Chicago Fire are already building a new stadium, meaning Chicago's South Loop could end up with two brand-new venues staring at each other across the river. DanteTheDon credited Aecom as the engineering firm behind the visuals, and whether you buy the whole vision or not, the images are a serious upgrade from anything the Sox have had to sell fans in decades.
There's real distance between renderings and a groundbreaking, though. The current lease at Rate Field runs through 2029, and the Railyards concept is still in the feasibility-study stage — reviewing transportation and environmental impact before it's even formally added to the list of options the team would weigh alongside sites like The 78. Ishbia himself isn't even the controlling owner yet; that transition, per reporting on the deal, could take until 2034, with Jerry Reinsdorf still holding the decision-making power in the meantime.
None of that stopped barstoolWSD from firing off a reaction the second the renderings hit his timeline. He called the morning "bittersweet" — thrilled about where the franchise might be headed, but clearly still processing what it means to picture the Sox somewhere other than the only home most of this fan base has ever known.
Here are my knee jerk thoughts on the white sox stadium news this morning I’m pumped but this is bittersweet
He also floated his own long-running pitch in a separate post: build a new, north-south facing Soldier Field on the current Sox Park footprint at 35th and Lot B, sparing Armour Park entirely. That's his personal idea, not anything tied to the Railyards proposal or anything the team has floated — a different stadium, a different sport, and a reminder that Chicago's stadium-swap conversations never stay confined to just one franchise.
For now, the actual next step is boring by comparison to the renderings: studies, reviews, and a franchise still years away from a real decision. But a fan base that's watched the on-field product bottom out in recent seasons will take a flashy rendering and a reason to dream over nothing at all, bittersweet or not.