After Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam first denied they wanted to build a new lakefront stadium, then were rumored to be looking at land in suburban Brook Park for a new stadium, then it was revealed they’d asked for $500-600 million in city money toward a $1-1.2 billion renovation, last night the Haslams officially said they either want to renovate their current stadium or build a new one in Brook Park, depending:
“We looked at can we solve all the issues on the waterfront for our fans?” Dee said during an interview with a small group of reporters who cover the Browns.
“It’s hard to get into, hard to get out of, we have no parking. I think that was really something important for us, as how to solve those issues. And when you start thinking about what Cleveland can be and what the vision for this city is, I think we underestimate what a great place it is. And I think there’s an opportunity here to perhaps build a domed stadium that can transform our area.
“That’s something exciting to think about. We’re looking at both options. Not one option is above the other. But I do think that Cleveland deserves to be thought of as this evolving, forward-thinking, creative city as opposed to not thinking big.”
Soooo, neither option is above the other, but Cleveland deserves to be thought of as a place that “thinks big,” we see what you’re doing there. Jimmy Haslam said a new domed stadium would cost at least $2 billion; asked how it would be paid for, he replied, “I’ll just say this: We’re in negotiation with various government entities and we’ll see how things work out.”
There are a few things that could be going on here:
- The Haslams could be, as Dee seemed to be hinting with her “thinking big” talk, hoping to get a new dome out of this deal, and are hoping to fiscal-responsibility-shame local government officials into paying for maybe a billion dollars worth of it.
- They could be trying to make Cleveland officials more comfortable with giving them money toward renovations, and are hoping either the threat of moving to Brook Park or the anchoring effect of mentioning a more expensive option will make half a billion dollars in public money seem cheap by comparison.
- They could be throwing both ideas at the wall and figuring they’ll take whichever one sticks.
There’s been no reply from city or county officials yet, so we’ll have to wait and see how this goes over. Either plan would be a hefty public expense to upgrade or replace a privately used stadium that’s just 25 years old, especially when both stadium plans would remain within Cuyahoga County — “one thing we’ve made very clear is we’re going to be in Northeastern Ohio forever as far as we’re concerned,” said Jimmy Haslam last night. Getting a bidding war going between a county and itself would seem to be a heavy lift, but we’ve seen that stadium subsidy logic doesn’t always have to make sense, so, ball’s in your court, Cleveland area elected officials.
According to parkingreform.org, downtown Cleveland is 25% parking lots. I believe “thinking big” would be converting that land into housing that pays property tax.
That being said he does have a point. Cleveland has had a series of small thinking and/or corrupt leaders who ruined the city and that’s why the city has half the population it did 50 years ago. The current stadium embodies everything wrong with Cleveland:
1) It was built after Modell announced he was leaving. The city missed an opportunity to do things right by getting out in front of it years earlier (yes I know Modell declined the chance to be part of Gateway).
2) The design is awful. They basically took the same design as Tennessee and Baltimore and dropping it into Cleveland. It was stupid to have a stadium with open corners when you’re surrounded by the lake on 3 sides.
3) the location was dumb. One of the dumbest things about Cleveland is its lack of development on the Lakefront. They used up what should have been prime real estate for a stadium used 10 times per year. Next to it is a stupid private airport that’s used primarily by flight schools and Cleveland Clinic for organs being flown in (the main airport is 15 minutes away). They have also never addressed connectivity from downtown to the Lakefront.
So it would be a great idea for a new stadium somewhere else.
Detroit, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh, to name three, all had similar population declines over the last 50 years. Did Rust Belt cities all just happen to have “small-thinking” leaders?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a new stadium somewhere else, but for $1 billion in public money you could just buy every Browns season ticket holder a really nice winter coat or 20.
Detroit also had small thinking and corrupt leadership as well. That’s why it went bankrupt. Its come a long way in recent years basically because Dan Gilbert decided to pour billions of dollars into it.
Pittsburgh has leveled off its population loss and started turning around because they proactively decided to focus on tech, specifically robotics. They did a good job leveraging its strengths (specifically Carnegie Mellon) that’s why they made the final 20 in Amazon HQ2 sweepstakes (yes I know it was a sham for Bezos to extract more concessions from where he already wanted to go but still)
I don’t know St Louis very well so I can’t comment on it.
You’re co-writer is from Cleveland I am sure she could walk you through how horribly run the region is.
As far as the stadium goes, the wind from the lake is is one of many things wrong with the stadium. Its just horrible all around because it was poorly planned on a compressed timeline.
I think you’re missing my point about the correlation-causation fallacy.
Yes no causation between terrible leadership and the cities struggling…
” Did Rust Belt cities all just happen to have “small-thinking” leaders?”
Absolutely.
Without small thinking leaders in industrial cities the collapse of America’s manufacturing base and the transfer of jobs overseas/general domestic loss of jobs due to automation would have been impossible.
If it weren’t for small thinking politicians it would still be 1952, everyone would want to drive a Packard or Nash and everything would be just glorious (cue the Happy Days theme).
Yes because manufacturing moving overseas the leaders of these cities should have just thrown up their hands and just conceded that they would forever be shrinking cities. They shouldn’t have even tried to figure out a plan to thrive in a new era.
The fact that “they” may not have succeeded, or could have focused their efforts in a different direction is not evidence that they did not try.
The elected officials in most of the cities and towns I have lived in all my life have failed far more often than they have succeeded.
This does not mean they made no effort – which is what your posts on this issue appear to suggest.
It is interesting to me that you say the city “missed an opportunity” to keep the original Browns in place given that they had a pretty good offer on the table that Modell – the perpetually undercapitalised owner – refused.
There were, no matter whom one supports or opposes, two distinct parties to that failed agreement. It is unfair to suggest that only one of them is to blame.
Modell could have said yes to what Cleveland was offering (or continued negotiating). He chose to cash out instead. Was there any number the city could have put on the table he would have accepted, given what we know now? I have my doubts.
Whether either of us agree with it or not, it was still his decision to leave, not the city’s.
OK I lived in Cleveland for 13 years and had many dealings with city staff and elected officials on assorted business initiatives. No these people didn’t try.
For example (I wasn’t involved in this one) GE announced it was looking for a site in the US to build what it said would be the largest solar panel manufacturing plant in the world. I asked a Councilman if Cleveland was going to place a bid and he said “that won’t work in Cleveland its not sunny enough” That’s just one example.
I was talking with the community development director and he was asking about what cities would be good examples for Cleveland. I suggested Toronto because they had done a good job of developing the lakefront something Cleveland never figured out how to do. He said he had never been. I was thinking to myself “you’re in charge of development of a city on one of the great lakes. You’ve had the job for 4 years. Your comps are Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Toronto. All of them are within a 7 hour drive. How have you not visited each of them just to take notes”
Just small examples of small thinking poor leadership.
Nobody’s arguing that Cleveland has had all bright lights in its local government for the last half-century, Aqib. But that’s true of lots of cities — Chicago, Phoenix, we could go on and on — that haven’t lost a ton of population, and other cities like Pittsburgh have done a lot to recover from deindustrialization and still have lost a ton of population. So that’s not the determining factor.
Anyway, going back to your original comment, you’re saying a new stadium would be a good idea because it would be “big thinking.” But that’s what was claimed about the old stadium, not to mention the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, plus other big-brained projects like Detroit’s Ren Center and monorail. Sure, it’s easy to say after the fact that the problem is these cities should have done a different big project, but then you really need to point to some Rust Belt cities that actually avoided huge population loss by building something flashy. Can you think of an example?
No, my statement is that the city leadership’s inability to get a stadium deal right is one of many examples of the their inability to get ANYTHING right.
There is 450 acres on the lakefront being used for a private airport no one uses. An elevated highway that cuts downtown off from the lakefront. 6 miles of city owned land that the every mayor talks about redeveloping. Every time a Cleveland company merges with a company outside Cleveland, the city loses the headquarters. Cleveland had an opportunity many years ago to lure Progressive Insurance from the suburbs to downtown but lost it because Progressive wanted free parking for the employees.
So when Haslam and his people say that the politicians and leaders in Cleveland “think small” its true. Even though Haslam himself is a horrible human being.
He’s right tho. Cleveland was a world class city up there with New York and Chicago and leaders with corruption, and political instability gutted the city. Porter to me is the biggest reason CLE is the way it is. He gutted the transportation system and moved money from a voter approved downtown subway for Interstates and highways causing white flight to expedite. Cleveland city proper has 4 million now it’s just 300,00
Yes Porter was removed years later and convicted of corruption. Who would have guessed
No doubt many ‘bad’ leaders contributed to Cleveland’s problems.
However, like Buffalo, Detroit and many other midwestern cities, the main driver of their population loss has been the decline/collapse in manufacturing/production.
For lake adjacent cities like Cleveland & Buffalo, the loss of “goods” also meant significant drops in shipping related revenue/jobs.
The notion that “better leadership” could have made all midwest cities a new Silicon Valley is wildly unrealistic.
Could increased diversity of the economy and better decisions/less corruption have helped?
Of course.
Would those changes have “fixed” the population & economic loss?
Not a chance.
No one is saying Cleveland or any of those places would be California but to have half the population you had 50 years ago is inexcusable
If I recall correctly, Lake Erie was there 25 years ago when they were designing Browns Stadium as an open air stadium. Maybe the blizzards and freezing winds coming off Lake Erie are something that suddenly appeared in the last 25 years. $1.2 billion renovation? That’s 50,000 pounds of gold or 4,000,000 pounds of silver. Maybe they’ll rebuild it with gold trimmed silver!
Considering the fact that they called the old stadium the mistake by the lake (not the only stadium named that) I would say “no”.
The $1.2Bn could pay for about 4 million annual Sunday Ticket subscriptions instead… or a meal* for every person in America. If we limited that money to only those under the poverty line, it would fund nearly a week’s food.
Hmmm. A week’s food for the needy or 250 football games in a new stadium over 30 years… and an extra $40-50m in revenue p/a for the billionaire owners, of course.
Decisions decisions.
*I mean your basic soup kitchen/potluck meal…. not a restaurant dining experience.
Yes but what happened was that the city made the deal to build a new stadium in February of 1996 to open in August 1999. So you’re talking 30 months to design, finance, and build a stadium (including demolishing the stadium that was already there). That’s why the design wasn’t essentially a copy of other stadiums built around the same time. The hurried construction timeline also lead to them cutting corners which make it a maintenance nightmare.
February 1996 to August 1999 is 42 months.
Sorry multi-tasking. I mixed up the date of the agreement with the ground breaking in Feb 1997 demolition of the old stadium.
Random thought totally unrelated to Cleveland (though I have family up that way, and a sort of sentimental attachment to the Browns):
Does the bridge collapse give political cover to Maryland and Baltimore legislators to say “no stadium money for you, we’ve got to spend a billion dollars rebuilding a major highway bridge”?
Ethically? Sure. Legally? I’m pretty sure the O’s and Ravens money was already allocated and can’t be clawed back.
“we’re going to be in Northeastern Ohio forever as far as we’re concerned”
Well, if that isn’t cover for a secret deal with Greensboro I don’t know what is. Time’s wasting. Buffalo got the message on Greensboro real quick. Will you?
You don’t want to lose your team a second time. Because there is no chance we’d ever come back if you did. Unless someone wrote a big check and built a stadium, obviously.
“You don’t want to lose your team a second time.”
Third time. Don’t forget the Cleveland Rams.
The Haslams cannot legally move the team out of the region. They want a dome obviously. Cleveland is a smaller market that has 3 pro teams unlike Buffalo,Nashville,etc. As a lifelong Clevelander and Browns fan I would let them go to Brookpark and build the dome. The existing stadium is not worth a 1B renovation and it is still not paid-off. The Haslams sold Pilot for over 13B ; sad that they won’t pay to build their cash-cow dome themselves…
Can’t move because of the Art Modell Law? That’s never actually been tested in court, has it? Precourt sold the Crew rather than fight it, as I recall.
True it has not been tested in court. By the wording it seems like there are loopholes but at least its something.
Coincidentally the Haslams built a new stadium for the Crew in Columbus a few years ago. Roughly 200M private / 100M public money. Same age stadium as Browns ; too short of lifespan.
I get it that the owners want the best but they need to pay more for the football stadiums. Half from the Haslams is not nearly enough. New public funding would have to be voter approved as well ; good chance of failure IMO…