Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam released the following statement Thursday about the team’s plans to build a new domed stadium in Brook Park:
“Our stadium planning process started in 2017 and as Mayor Bibb mentioned today, for the last two years, we have had positive, productive, and collaborative dialogue with the Mayor and his staff, working together to find the optimal long-term solution for our stadium.
“We pursued many possibilities, with our initial focus on renovating the current stadium and engaged design, construction and engineering experts to develop a plan to do so. We also explored building a new stadium on multiple sites, both within and outside of Cleveland. We’ve learned through our exhaustive work that renovating our current stadium will simply not solve many operational issues and would be a short-term approach. With more time to reflect, we have also realized that without a dome, we will not attract the type of large-scale events and year-round activity to justify the magnitude of this public-private partnership. The transformational economic opportunities created by a dome far outweigh what a renovated stadium could produce with around ten events per year.
“In the spirit of exhausting all downtown options and continuing to work in good faith with the Mayor, when he announced his efforts to potentially make Burke available for development last month, we engaged in further diligence with the city and County Executive Ronayne’s staff regarding a potential dome stadium on Burke. The significant design, construction, geotechnical and environmental challenges were again apparent. Our work reinforced that despite the City, County and our team doing their best to make the economics work, building a stadium on the Burke property is cost prohibitive and not feasible, especially with no certainty regarding potential timing of closure of the Airport.
“We have communicated to the Mayor and his team at every step of the process regarding our mutual efforts to keep the stadium downtown and we conveyed to them yesterday, our most impactful investment for our region is to focus on making a dome stadium and adjacent development in Brook Park a reality. 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.
“A solution like this will be transformative not only for Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, but also the entire state of Ohio from the resulting events, tourism, and job creation. Additionally, moving the current stadium will allow the city and region’s collective vision for the Cleveland lakefront to be optimally realized, and downtown will benefit from the major events the Brook Park dome brings to the region.
“Cleveland and Northeast Ohio are the fabric of the Browns and that will always be the case. Our community commitment to Cleveland and efforts to improve the lives of its residents will not change. Again, our work with Mayor Bibb and city officials has been transparent and collaborative throughout. We will continue to work in earnest with city, county, and state officials to work together on these transformational opportunities.
“As we have previously said, we understand this is a complex process with more questions still to be answered and we will continue to communicate openly as our process evolves. We recognize our season on the field has not had the start we all hoped for and are working hard to improve each week to make our fans proud. At the same time, it is critical that we remain committed to the best long-term, sustainable solution for our stadium and to providing the world-class dome experience our fans deserve. We are confident that the Brook Park project will significantly benefit the Northeast Ohio region for generations to come.”
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Haslams issue statement regarding Browns stadium move to Brook Park
