CLEVELAND, Ohio (92.3 The Fan) – The Cleveland Browns are going to play football in Brook Park starting in 2029.
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb appears to finally accept reality for the first time – publicly – during an exclusive interview with the Fox 8 I-Team’s Ed and Peggy Gallek, which aired Tuesday.
“There are more important priorities than the Cleveland Browns,” Bibb told the Gallek’s and Fox 8.
“We gotta move on. If they go to Brook Park, God bless them, good luck. But, by hell or high water, we are going to develop a lakefront our residents can be proud of.”
Bibb, county executive Chris Ronayne and Michael Deemer, President + CEO of Downtown Cleveland, Inc., have railed against the proposed $3.4 billion enclosed stadium and development complex to be built off Snow and Engle Roads.
They believe it’s too much of a burden to taxpayers and would do significant economic harm to downtown. To them, pouring over $1 billion in taxpayer money into an aging and poorly located stadium on the lakefront is the responsible thing to do instead.
Ronayne won his fight with the team, getting the Browns last week to move on without the $178 million in county support plus backing of Brook Park’s $422 million in bonds that was requested for the project to be built across from Hopkins International Airport, which is about to undergo a $2 billion reconstruction.
Instead of graciously taking his political victory lap, Ronayne sent a nasty letter to the Browns accusing the team of “greed” and “opportunism” and trying to “bully” and “fleece” taxpayers.
Statements from Bibb, Ronayne and the Browns have been bouncing back and forth for months faster than serves and volleys at Wimbledon.
The time has come for the war of words and political performance art to end and everyone to move forward.
It is unfortunate political leaders dealt with the Browns in such a disingenuous fashion – pledging privately to work with the team only to vilify them publicly, but that is how things work here in northeast Ohio.
The Browns worked for over seven years on their post 2028 season stadium situation, spending millions to draw up plans to develop the lakefront around the existing stadium to coincide with an overhaul of the 26-year-old building. But the politicians did what they always do here – drag their feet and offer weak and non-viable solutions to prop themselves up to make it look like they’re fighting the good fight and then run to cameras, microphones and keyboards kicking and screaming when the Browns finally got fed up waiting on them.
Leaving the lakefront opens significant possibilities for downtown Cleveland to finally turn the lakefront into a world class destination instead of it remaining the sea of parking lots with an empty ashtray of a stadium in the middle of them that it currently boasts.
Cleveland, which is facing a multitude of fiscal challenges, also escapes hundreds of millions in future stadium debt service and capital repair needs.
The politicians are right in that the Browns stand to make more money in Brook Park than downtown. They aren’t willing to invest $2.4 billion of their money not to. But they’re also providing a state of the art world class building capable of recruiting events the region could never have dreamed of hosting.
There are no guarantees for success, but the Browns have more skin in the game here than taxpayers do.
While the winds are blowing towards Brook Park strongly, there are hurdles to be cleared.
The state is working on how to provide $600 million in support for the project either through TIF (Tax Increment Financing) where tax revenues generated from the complex are used to pay off the bonds or bonding new tax revenue from increased taxes on gambling companies who operate in the state.
Lawmakers are also trying to navigate stadium project demands from the Bengals and soon to be Reds as well as set the state up to be able to absorb future stadium construction demands.
The Modell Law lawsuits filed by the Browns in U.S. District Court and by the city in county court are still pending.
Those will probably go away soon.
Without saying it specifically in that interview with Fox 8, we’ve told you for months Bibb wants money from the Browns to pay to demolish the existing stadium once it hosts its last game at the end of 2028 or January of 2029. He also wants a sizable contribution from the Haslams for lakefront redevelopment.
Once those dominoes fall and that check to the city of Cleveland clears, shovels go in the ground.