Cleveland Browns’ Stadium Move to Brook Park Raises Concerns
CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Cleveland Browns intend to leave the city of Cleveland for a new stadium in Brook Park, according to Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb.
Bibb made the bombshell announcement during a Thursday afternoon news conference at City Hall. It comes after more than a year of negotiations during which Bibb and Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam failed to agree upon a deal to renovate the Browns’ current home at the city-owned lakefront stadium in downtown Cleveland.
If the Browns leave Cleveland, it will mark the second time in three decades that Cleveland’s home team has fled the city’s borders.
The Haslams’ decision to leave Cleveland is a “frustrating and profoundly disheartening” move that will weaken downtown Cleveland and hurt the region by creating a new suburban entertainment district that would compete with existing amenities downtown, Bibb said.
The mayor described his negotiating philosophy as one that prioritized the city’s needs over the desires of the team owners.
“Yes, the Browns and our visitors matter,” he said. “But the well-being of the people who live here will always come first. This was our most important priority, and it is the one we must never compromise.”
The Haslams, in a lengthy statement late Thursday afternoon, didn’t outright say they intend to move to Brook Park, though they did speak glowingly of a domed stadium and how it would be an economic boon to the region.
Decades of research shows that public subsidies for new sports stadiums don’t deliver such benefits, even though sports teams and public officials routinely claim otherwise. What new stadium projects do achieve, according to the research, is shifting economic benefits from one area of a region to another.
In their Thursday statement, the Haslams offered a vague description, but no specifics, of how they might finance their plans for a $2.4 billion domed stadium in Brook Park.
“With the funding mechanisms we continue to work on, this stadium will not use existing taxpayer-funded streams that would divert resources from other more pressing needs. Instead, the over $2 billion private investment, together with the public investment, will create a major economic development project that will drive the activity necessary to pay the public bond debt service through future project-generated and Browns-generated revenue,” the statement said.
Brook Park Mayor Edward Orcutt shared no financing details when contacted by cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer.
Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and Council President Pernel Jones Jr. already publicly shut down the possibility of providing county funding during an August news conference, saying that county subsidies for a Brook Park stadium do not make fiscal sense for residents or taxpayers.
Ronayne, in an emailed statement Thursday, said he’s already made his position clear: “Browns stadium should remain downtown,” he said.
If the Haslams find that their Brook Park plans aren’t viable, Bibb said he is willing to return to the negotiating table to keep the Browns in Cleveland, but only if the city’s contribution is a “responsible” one for residents and taxpayers. If the Browns do end up leaving Cleveland for Brook Park, Cleveland is already working on alternative plans for the lakefront that do not include the Browns, he said.
How the Negotiations Soured
Until now, the Haslams have said they were eyeing two options for the future home of the Browns, once the current lease expires at the end of the 2028 season. Their first option was a $1 billion makeover of the existing stadium, and the second was a new domed stadium in Brook Park.
The Haslams have yet to buy the 176-acre plot that’s under consideration there. They have indicated a stadium in Brook Park would be part of a much larger, yet-to-be-built, entertainment district.
Bibb offered $367 million in Cleveland taxpayer money to renovate the lakefront stadium, plus $93 million for future maintenance. He went public with this offer on Aug. 1.
When it became clear during negotiations that the Haslams preferred a new domed stadium over an open-air lakefront stadium renovation, Bibb said he attempted to pivot by offering them part of the land on which Burke Lakefront Airport sits.
That late-in-the-game pivot, Bibb said, cost time that could’ve been used to hash out a viable option in Cleveland.
In describing how the negotiations opened in 2022, Bibb painted a picture of a City Hall that was willing to take the Haslams’ demands seriously.
The Haslams wanted a 50-50 split between private financing and public financing, so Cleveland “got close” to providing that, Bibb said.
They wanted a lively, developed lakefront around the stadium, and better ingress and egress for fans. So, Cleveland sought and secured federal and state money for that plan, and “accelerated” its lakefront redevelopment efforts, including plans for a pedestrian land bridge over the Shoreway, he said.
“Every milestone they’ve asked for, we did,” Bibb said.
Over the last four to six weeks, Bibb said he even explored what it would take to close Burke and provide a portion of that land for a new football venue and surrounding development, but the Haslams were “not interested in pursuing this option.”
That timing correlates with the city’s recent release of a study suggesting that closing Burke would be possible and “economically advantageous,” though Bibb did not, at that time, mention the stadium as a possible use for the site.
In both offers – at the current site and at Burke — Bibb said he tried to balance the Haslams’ needs against those of the broader community.
“The Haslam Sports Group may want a roof over their heads, but it is my responsibility as the mayor of this great city to ensure Cleveland residents have a roof over theirs,” Bibb said, adding, “We must be practical about our many needs and resources.”
Bibb said his offers would’ve provided a world-class facility, improved the fan experience and allowed the team to remain “highly profitable.” On the Burke offer, he said it would’ve rivaled – and might have been “arguably better” than — the Brook Park development plans. Bibb did not say, however, who would have supplied the rest of the money needed to build the expensive domed facility there.
The Haslams, in their statement, said the economics wouldn’t have worked at Burke, given what they described as “significant design, construction, geotechnical and environmental challenges.”
It would be “cost prohibitive and not feasible, especially with no certainty regarding potential timing of closure of the airport,” the statement said.
What Now for the City and the Browns?
Next steps remain uncertain.
Bibb punted two outstanding questions about the viability of the Brook Park move to City Council: enforcement of the state’s “Art Modell law” and enforcement of an agreement that would bind the “Cleveland Browns” name to whatever professional football team is physically based in Cleveland.
Those two points will be a “question for City Council to take on,” Bibb said.
On the state’s Art Modell law, which was passed after its namesake, former team owner Art Modell moved to Baltimore in 1996, the courts have yet to definitely determine its constitutionality. It requires sports teams to give their respective cities six months’ notice before leaving town and to give the home city or area residents a chance to buy the team first.
City Council quickly put the ball back in Bibb’s court on the Art Modell law. In a social media post later on Thursday, council said it expects the mayor to enforce the law on Cleveland’s behalf.
Separately, Bibb used Thursday’s news conference to send a message to state leaders, including Gov. Mike DeWine, about their potential funding support for a Brook Park stadium.
Bibb discouraged DeWine from enabling the Brook Park plan, saying that “allocating scarce public resources toward a [Brook Park] move that harms downtown and weakens Cuyahoga County is bad public policy.”
If the state does offer hundreds of millions for the Brook Park plan, Bibb said he hopes they would contribute the same to a new or renovated stadium in Cleveland.
Cleveland.com reached out on Thursday afternoon to a spokesman for DeWine.
Several state lawmakers have told cleveland.com in recent days that they hadn’t heard anything about an announcement that the Browns were moving to Brook Park.
“Nobody has reached out,” said state Rep. Tom Patton, a Strongsville Republican whose district includes Brook Park, in a text message Thursday afternoon.
During initial meetings with state lawmakers last spring, Browns representatives indicated the team is looking for the state to provide support via next year’s budget process.
When cleveland.com spoke to Orcutt, the Brook Park mayor, he said he was “incredibly excited” about the news, which he said the team conveyed to him on Thursday.
Orcutt refused to discuss a potential financing plan, including any subsidies to be provided by the city of Brook Park. He said the city and team owners are working on a traffic study to determine possible changes needed to adjacent roads, and he acknowledged the city would have to beef up municipal services, including more police, to make the domed stadium a reality.
Said Orcutt: “We’re building a dome. We’re going to have more events here. We’re going to make sure those events generate enough cash for the city of Brook Park to [allow the Browns to] come here. If it cannot produce and guarantee enough cash for Brook Park, then I will be working with our commissioners and council to be able to present the facts that this probably won’t work here.”
Despite their decision to relocate the team to a new stadium outside of Cleveland, the Haslams still insist that their commitment to the city of Cleveland remains unwavering.
“Cleveland and Northeast Ohio are the fabric of the Browns and that will always be the case,” they wrote. “Our community commitment to Cleveland and efforts to improve the lives of its residents will not change.”