Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have released a statement regarding their decision to move the team to Brook Park, Ohio.
The statement, released on the team’s official website, reads in part:
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.
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.
The Browns’ decision to move the team from Cleveland to Brook Park, where they will build a dome, has been a polarizing one for many fans. While the Northeast Ohio suburb is approximately 17 miles away from the the team’s current stadium in downtown Cleveland, the move has brought back memories of the franchise’s move to Baltimore in 1996, when it became the Ravens.
The Browns returned to the NFL as an expansion franchise in 1999, reassuming the franchise’s history and colors. Dating back to its return to the league, the team has played at Huntington Bank Stadium, which has previously been known as Cleveland Browns Stadium and FirstEnergy Stadium.
In a press conference revealing the team’s intentions, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said the city is willing to work with the team on solutions to keep it in the city.
“My team and I stand ready to re-engage with the Haslams if the Brook Park option does not prove viable,” Bibb said.
All indications, however, remain that the Browns are Brook Park bound, with their current lease with Cleveland for Huntington Bank Field set to expire in 2028.
