Arlington Park
defunct horse racing venue in Illinois
Arlington Park (formerly known as Arlington International Racecourse) was a Thoroughbred race track in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Illinois, United States. Once called the Arlington Park Jockey Club, it was located adjacent to the Illinois Route 53 expressway and serviced by the Chicago and North Western Railway.
On February 15, 2023, the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) completed their purchase of the Arlington Park property. The team may build a stadium on the site for its home games.
In August 2025, the racetrack was fully demolished, and the Chicago Bears confirmed their plan for a new stadium at the site.
However, in June 2026, the Chicago Bears Board of Directors voted to move forward with a plan to build a stadium in Hammond, Indiana after the failure of the so-called "megaprojects" bill in the Illinois Senate. As a result, the future of the Arlington Park site remains uncertain.
Overview
Arlington International was the site of the first thoroughbred race with a million-dollar purse, in 1981. The premier event at Arlington Park was the International Festival of Racing, held in early August, which featured three Grade 1 races on turf: the Arlington Million Stakes, Beverly D. Stakes and Secretariat Stakes.
Owner Churchill Downs Inc.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Arlington Park” as defunct horse racing venue in Illinois. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as defunct horse racing venue in Illinois. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4792383. Authority coordinates are 42.091, -88.010. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2023, 2025, 2026 and 1981.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Arlington Park” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.