Pluto:
CLEVELAND, Ohio – When it comes to a football stadium, the last thing Cleveland needs to do is spend $1 billion upgrading the current Browns Stadium. It’s 25 years old. It never was a great venue when it opened – especially compared to the baseball stadium up the street. In 1994, Jacobs Field, as it was originally called, was a palace. It’s now Progressive Field and it’s undergoing major renovations over the next few years. It remains a tremendous ballpark with lots of character.
Browns Stadium has about as much personality as an old-fashioned shopping mall, the kind that are going out of business across the country. Like those malls, no matter what you’d do with them – time has passed them by. The Browns and the city of Cleveland are in a negotiating battle over the stadium. The current plan is to renovate Browns Stadium. Don’t do it. Not worth it.
WHERE TO BUILD IT?
I’m not going to jump into the politics of a Brook Park site vs. something in Cleveland. Browns owners
Dee and Jimmy Haslam have floated the Brook Park idea. But I will ask this question: “Is having an outdoor stadium at its current location the best use of downtown Cleveland’s lakefront property?” If you’ve been to other cities on the Great Lakes, you know how Cleveland has wasted that valuable real estate. You can put a football stadium anywhere, you don’t need waterfront property. Those running the city have to know that, just as they have to know the lakefront doesn’t require a football stadium to enhance the location.
I know this won’t make some small businesses near the stadium happy, but please, get the football stadium away from the lake.
How many events are at Browns Stadium each year? Perhaps a dozen? The venues that bring business to downtown Cleveland are the arena and the ballpark. Combined, they cover about 300 days a year with something going on.
WHAT KIND OF STADIUM?
The Haslams are right: The best option for Northeast Ohio when it comes to a football stadium is a dome. It’s also more expensive, perhaps twice as much as upgrading the current stadium. The two stadiums being built now are in Buffalo and Nashville.
1. The Bills are starting a $1.5 billion project for an outdoor stadium.
Public funding covers $850 million.
2. Nashville is building a dome for $2.1 billion,
with at least $1.2 billion coming from public funding. It will be the new home of the NFL Titans, but other events will be held there because it’s a dome.
3. The
three NFL stadiums built entirely with private money are SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles (2020); Gillette Stadium (2002) in Foxboro, Mass.; and MetLife Stadium (2010) in New Jersey.
Notice that only SoFi has recently been entirely funded privately. It also is the home of the Rams and Chargers, two NFL franchises.
There is some discussion of the Bears launching a stadium project,
with the team offering $2 billion for a dome project. We’ll see how that plays out.
The NFL hates it when teams pay the entire bill for a stadium. They want all their owners having the option of squeezing cash out of the taxpayers for new venues. It’s how they have always done business and always will. The league has only 32 teams. You can’t open your own NFL franchise. And they leverage that power.
The Browns stadium issue will linger for months. I will write more about it. But the Browns and the city should look at what is best for the lakefront (not a football stadium) and where it would make sense to build a dome. They need to be focused. Put a mutual target on the wall instead of being distracted with different options. Once that’s done, then fight over the money.
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