The debate over Cleveland Browns stadium has intensified over the past week. Owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam favor a new $2.4 billion domed facility in Brook Park, while Cleveland and Cuyahoga County officials want to keep the team downtown.
Ideastream Public Media’s sports commentator Terry Pluto believes a regional approach is the best solution.
On Aug. 1, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb offered a $461 million package of public money to incentivize the team to stay put for another 30-year term when it expires in 2028. The public money would go toward a billion dollar renovation of the existing stadium.
Two days later, the team released renderings of a prospective complex in suburban Brook Park, built on the site of a former Ford plant near Cleveland Hopkins International airport. That stadium would have a roof.
Last week, in a letter to Browns owners Jimmy & Dee Haslam, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and County Council President Pernel Jones Jr. said moving the team to Brook Park “does not make fiscal sense” for county taxpayers.
Pluto said there are those who believe: "The Haslams are rich. The NFL is rich. They should pay for everything."
Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium and the current Cleveland Browns stadium, he said, were “almost virtually all publicly funded,” along with Progressive Field and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
“The counter from the city or county is, ‘Yeah, but you guys are a lot more rich now than you used to be.’ So those are the two extremes,” Pluto said.
Pluto said the back-and-forth could go on for a while.
“When you get a bunch of politicians from different areas involved, you're going to get a lot of people making a lot of statements and a lot of, ‘Hey, look at me, I'm standing up for the voters’ or whatever. So that's where we're at. But I don't smell anything close to a settlement at all,” Pluto said.
The Browns say the only way to finance the new stadium project is through a 50-50 public-private partnership — excluding cost overruns, which the team would foot.
That means the Browns plan to privately invest $1.2 billion toward the stadium and will be looking at local, county and state governments for the rest, Pluto said.
In recent stadium deals elsewhere, the public has contributed a higher percentage, Pluto said.
“At Buffalo, they're building a new outdoor stadium — $850 million from the public, $690 (million) from the Buffalo Bills," he said. "Nashville's building a big dome, $1.2 billion from the public. $850 million from the Tennessee Titans. All these, basically, it's almost at least the public paying 60% or more, the NFL paying 40."
The team and the politicians are digging in their heels on funding.
“There's a lot of pressure on the Browns — the Browns will never admit it — not to make some kind of sweetheart deal. Meanwhile, there's a lot of pressure on the politicians to give the NFL the least amount (of money) possible," Pluto said.
In a Cleveland.com column posted July 29, Pluto wrote that he’s in favor of a new, domed stadium. And he believes the only way forward is to take a regional approach.
“You know, what I prefer is a thing that Cleveland.com did: Talk to all these experts. And they talked about viewing not just the domed stadium, but revamping the airport and other things as a regional project. It was a big picture idea how to do this with a half percent sales tax done over several counties and creating money for both the dome, the airport, other stadium things for upkeep on these, these facilities. This is a regional franchise or a regional thing, so why not approach it regionally?”
And he believes it would be an opportunity to develop Cleveland’s lakefront.
“I really would love to see that area around the lake, the stadium there and some of those loading docks and all this, really developed (as well as) Burke Lakefront into something special. But this, again, would take a big regional approach,” Pluto said.
Pluto doesn't buy the argument that losing the stadium downtown would be a huge economic blow.
“Let's be real, you're talking about 9 or 10 dates at that stadium. That's it,” he said.
The city of Cleveland is working on a lakefront redevelopment plan, including a land bridge connecting Downtown to the lakefront, that it says will happen with or without a lakefront stadium. The mayor also has said he's open to examining alternate uses for Burke Lakefront Airport.
Pluto said resolution of the stadium debate is a long way off and said “pointing fingers” is likely to continue for some time.
