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Tag: Haslams

  • Haslams to Pay Cleveland $100 Million for Stadium Demolition, Lakefront Development – Cleveland Scene

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    After a in-person meeting and two Cokes at Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s home in Bratenahl on Friday, Mayor Bibb believed he came to a fair deal with the Browns owners he has been fighting against in court and public opinion since they announced their intentions to move to Berea.

    Haslams Sports Group will pay to demolish the current Huntington Bank Field on the lakefront after the lease with Cleveland is up in 2029. They will also, Bibb announced in a press conference on Monday, pay the city $90 million combined through a lump sum and installments over the next 20 years.

    All pending lawsuits between the Browns and the City of Cleveland, after years of complaints and filings, are now dropped as well.

    “I think the fight we put up was the right fight,” Bibb said from a podium in the Mayor’s Office’s Red Room. “This deal shows that the fight worked. And we have a win-win for the city and a win-win for the region.”

    Jimmy Haslam, coming off yet another embarrassing Browns loss, said the $100 million heading the city’s way is very much in line with Bibb’s vision for Cleveland.

    “After such a bumpy time period, we’ll just describe it as this: How excited we are to make this investment in the City of Cleveland with Mayor Bibb. I think these dollars will be put to good use, [and] will make Cleveland an even better place to live, work and raise a family,” he said.

    Cleveland will receive the first $25 million of the money this year. Starting on Jan. 1, 2029 the Haslams will pay Cleveland $5 million a year until 2033. That amounts to $80 million in cash.

    The remaining $20 million will come in the form of a specific community benefits project paid in $2 million installments until 2045. Neither Bibb nor Haslam elaborated on details on that point.

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    Mark Oprea

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  • Bibb: Browns Move to Brook Park Will Economically Harm Cleveland, Cuyahoga County

    Bibb: Browns Move to Brook Park Will Economically Harm Cleveland, Cuyahoga County

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    Mark Oprea

    Mayor Justin Bibb announced that Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have decided to move the Browns to a soon-to-be-built $2 billion stadium village in Brook Park.

    In an alternately solemn and feisty speech in front of a packed Red Room at City Hall on Thursday, Mayor Justin Bibb announced that Jimmy and Dee Haslam intend to officially move the Cleveland Browns to Brook Park in a new domed stadium.

    The decision, apparently conveyed to Bibb in a phone call Wednesday night, put the mayor on the defensive as he outlined a laundry list of moves he and City Hall deployed to convince the Haslams that keeping the team in their namesake city, on a lakefront the owners had implored/demanded the city improve, was the right thing to do. Absconding to Brook Park will create an annual $30 million economic hit to downtown, he reported a recent impact study found, and detract from and compete with public infrastructure that the city and county have already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into.

    Noting that Cleveland’s offer and attendant lakefront moves — $461 million in subsidies to the Haslams, state and federal grants collected to convert the Shoreway to a pedestrian-friendly boulevard and build a landbridge connector, the formation of a waterfront development corporation to guide projects — met all of the Haslams’ suggested demands when the two sides first talked after he entered office, Bibb said their desire for a dome came later. This, he said, wasted precious time.

    And when it became clear a dome was the only option the Haslams would consider, the city quickly moved to find other options downtown, including the offer of land at Burke. This, he said, simply didn’t meet their timeline or financial plans.

    “This is a deliberate choice—one driven by a desire to maximize profits rather than positive impact. They had the opportunity to reinvest in Cleveland, transform the current stadium into a world-class facility, enhance the fan experience and remain highly profitable,” Bibb said from the Red Room podium days after Cavs owner Dan Gilbert’s company cut the ribbon on a new riverfront development that will include the team’s new training facilities.

    Both the financial strife and the emotional weight of losing the negotiations brought out a heavy-hearted Bibb on Thursday, who often bit his lip or raised his hands when recalling the city’s two years of work.

    From the start, Bibb and the city sought to address the Browns’ concerns — “fan experience,” “traffic” and ensuring Cleveland “would really accelerate lakefront development.”

    “Every milestone they’ve asked for, we hit,” Bibb said. “We created a new waterfront development authority. We got state support for the land bridge. We got federal support—with more on the way.”

    Compared to the Brook Park plan, “We believe the renovation was a competitive deal,” he said.

    Bibb’s sentiment has been mirrored by a swath of public officials, from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown to County Executive Chris Ronayne, the latter who reiterated succinctly in a press release during Bibb’s speech that, “the Browns stadium should remain downtown.”

    In a short statement Thursday afternoon, the Haslams said: “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.”

    The Haslams have previously said they would pay for half of the $2.4 billion dome. Ronayne, again, has said the county is not interested in forking over dough. The sin tax, legally speaking, can only be used to fund the current lakefront stadium. And so far Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has been silent on how much the state could possibly contribute, though the Haslams appear to hope for around $600 million. The team has explored a variety of other novel financing concepts involving that public-private partnership to come up with the rest.

    92.3 The Fan reported that Bibb has asked the Haslams for three things given their decision to leave for Brook Park: “The first was that the Browns pay for the demolition of the current stadium, which should cost between $15-25 million. Bibb also sought financial support for small business owners impacted by the team’s departure to Brook Park as well as support from the Haslam Sports Group and Browns for the development of the lakefront.”

    In closing, Bibb said that if the Brook Park plan turns out not to be viable, he stands willing and with open arms to continue talks about keeping the Browns downtown.

    “It’s the wrong time not to choose Cleveland,” he said. “And the wrong time not to choose our lakefront downtown.”

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    Mark Oprea

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  • As Cleveland Makes Stadium Pitch, Optimism in Brook Park After Meetings With Haslam Reps for New Dome

    As Cleveland Makes Stadium Pitch, Optimism in Brook Park After Meetings With Haslam Reps for New Dome

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    Erik Drost

    Cleveland Browns Stadium might be vacant come 2029, an attendee of a meeting between Brook Park and the Browns on Wednesday told Scene.

    The day before Mayor Justin Bibb publicly released Cleveland’s latest proposal to the Browns for renovating the existing stadium on the lakefront—a contribution of $461 million to the $1-billion-plus project—and asked the Haslams to respond by Aug. 12, the team welcomed officials from Brook Park for a series of meetings at Browns headquarters in Berea.

    Starting at one o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesday, roughly a dozen officials from the suburb convened in a series of small groups in a conference room at 76 Lou Groza Blvd., itching to entertain the Haslam Sports Group’s plans for the future of Cleveland Browns Stadium a few miles south of Cleveland.

    By 4 p.m. that day, many had walked away with an answer crystal clear from their point of view: The Haslams are all but likely to pursue that 176 acres of land in Brook Park and a new dome over renovating the current stadium on the lakefront.

    “I think they have big plans,” a source familiar with the Wednesday meetings told Scene.

    “If you put a gun to my head? Yeah, they’re going to Brook Park,” they added. “Do I still think that legally or financially it could still be held up? Yeah, I do. I do.”

    The meeting, which the source said was conducted with representatives from the Haslam Sports Group, marks a plot point in one of the meatiest Cleveland sports sagas since Art Modell infamously moved the Browns to Baltimore.

    Since February, when news broke of Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s planned purchase of a massive plot of land in Brook Park, the team has kept mum their intentions for what happens after the lease at Cleveland Browns Stadium’s lease ends in 2028. 

    But just days after Jimmy and Dee Haslam told the assembled Browns press squad in West Virginia that there was no hard deadline to make a decision, Bibb ended the city’s public silence and gave them one.

    “The Browns have been an essential fixture on our lakefront for decades. But our first priority is always our residents,” Bibb said in a statement, arguing it’s better financial sense to renovate the stadium than open public coffers to build a $2-billion dome in Brook Park. “Having the Browns play here is integral to our city’s identity and community spirit. This initiative must go beyond the Browns and be about what’s best for downtown, the neighborhoods, the suburbs, and the region.”

    “The stadium is more than just a venue. It’s tailgating in the Muni Lot. It’s celebrating on West 6th,” he said, adding what might be an unconvincing note selling the lakefront stadium over a dome: “It’s Lake Effect snow drifting over the field—toe-warmers and three sweaters on the bone-rattling wind-chill days off the lake.”

    Of the public release and deadline, Bibb’s Chief of Staff Bradford Davy told reporters it was simply time, after more than a year of negotiations, to get an answer.

    “It’s the result of 18 months of conversations. We’ve talked about every deal point that exists in that lease,” Davy told Signal Cleveland. “The only thing left to do is transmit those deal terms in a formal document and that’s what we did.”

    “We’ve gotten to a point where we’ve really exhausted a lot of the deal points,” he told Cleveland.com. “We’re at a place now where we need to be asking questions about what the future of the lakefront looks like, and to answer that question, we need to know whether or not the Browns will call it home.”

    The Haslams Sports Group, in a statement from Chief Operating Officer David Jenkins, responded that day: “We appreciate the latest proposal from Mayor Bibb and his administration and will be following up with the City of Cleveland to better understand the details while we are still reviewing it.

    “We are working diligently to comprehensively examine all options to identify the best path for not only our fans, but also Greater Cleveland and Northeast Ohio,” he added. “Our region deserves to be thought of as evolving, forward-thinking, and innovative, so we need to think boldly and creatively in the process.”

    All of which seems to have taken front row at Wednesday’s meeting at 76 Lou Groza Blvd.

    While Bibb offered the Browns exclusive use of the Willard parking garage and Muni Lot on game and event days, and while he said he’d welcome the Haslams for discussions on participating in the city’s plans to develop the land around the stadium, what the billionaires have in mind for a possible Brook Park complex seems far more lucrative and dramatic in comparison.

    A Haslams Sports Group rep admitted as much on Wednesday to some Brook Park officials, noting the limitations of the current stadium site, issues with parking, and saying it simply doesn’t match up with what the Haslams ultimately want to do, the source said.

    In other words, what’s possible in Brook Park.

    Some initial renderings of those plans, portions of which have been leaked and others of which have been shared in off-the-record presentations with reporters from various Cleveland media outlets, show what the Haslams have in store beyond the dome, and the splashy events and concerts they would expect to draw thanks to a roof.

    For the Brook Park coalition, which included Mayor Edward Orcutt, the Haslams Group played a flashy minutes-long flyover video.

    “Think Disneyland,” the source said.

    Imagine a Crocker Park-style shopping and entertainment center. Luxury condos.

    “The Box,” as Haslam’s team dubbed it. Everything self-contained. Everything, including parking, in the team’s control.

    Brook Park can’t put the financial backing toward a stadium that Cleveland can, of course, meaning the question of how it all gets paid for remains open.

    “Those kinds of things are being worked out behind the scenes,” Mayor Ed Orcutt told Fox 8 earlier this week. “I’m going to be very limited in what I can say with information on that.”

    The state would likely play a major role; Cuyahoga County, which is going to shoulder a massive financial burden with the upcoming jail and courthouse projects, has remained on the sidelines of the current talks.

    “We are hopeful that the city of Cleveland and the Browns come to a resolution. We have not been a party to their negotiations,” a county spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.

    Given Bibb’s public release of the city’s proposal and new deadline for the Haslams to respond, it appears the City of Cleveland won’t go quietly. City Council is likely to raise a fuss, especially after passing an ordinance confirming their intentions to utilize Ohio’s “Art Modell law,” which theoretically makes it harder for teams to leave cities. (It’s yet to be tested.)

    But, given the tenor of talks with Brook Park officials, neither that nor Cleveland’s latest offering will stand in the way, according to the source.

    “They’re building that dome.”

    The Haslam Sports Group, in that statement Thursday, emphasized no decision has been made. “We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share,” it read.

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    Mark Oprea

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  • At Recent Panel, Sports Stadium Financing Experts Warn Against Massive Public Subsidies for Cleveland Browns

    At Recent Panel, Sports Stadium Financing Experts Warn Against Massive Public Subsidies for Cleveland Browns

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    Mark Oprea

    Ward 16 Councilman Brian Kazy (far right) fixed together a panel of stadium politics experts—Ken Silliman, Victor Matheson and Brad Humphreys.

    If you were to pick out any average Browns fan or Northeast Ohioan off the street, you’d probably get a mixed bag of answers to what’s become an increasingly controversial question: What should come of Cleveland Browns Stadium?

    Let the Haslams relocate to Brook Park with a $2-billion dome (with half coming from the taxpayers of Ohio, Cuyahoga County and other sources). Focus on renovating the current one to the tune of $1 billion (again, with the Haslams asking for half the tab to be picked up by the public). Forego costly renovations and instead do the best we can with the current stadium?

    Last Thursday afternoon at the Cleveland Public Library a panel of experts on stadium builds and sports politics gathered for two hours to discuss the hard facts and real-world implications of those possibilities.

    The panel—comprised of Ward 16 Councilman Brian Kazy, former Law Director Ken Silliman, and stadium economics experts Brad Humphreys and Victor Matheson— offered lots of opinions and facts but one seemed to come with agreement: That erecting a $2.4 billion Brook Park dome and surrounding village, saying goodbye to the lakefront, would not carry the perks to Clevelanders some have been touting.

    Namely, Cleveland plus Domed Stadium equals Wealthier City.

    “There’s zero evidence in 30 years of peer-reviewed academic research that a professional sports team in a city generates any substantial jobs, raises wages, raises income, raises property taxes,” Humphreys, an economics professors at the University of Alberta, said.

    “What professional sports are good at,” he added, “is moving economic activity around to different parts of the city.”

    With Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam’s stadium lease with the city to end in 2028, time is closing in on a decision that’s divided Clevelanders, just as it seemed to divide attendees at Thursday’s panel: Ask for public dollars to bankroll a projected $1.2 billion upgrade of Cleveland Browns Stadium where it is, or use (more) public dollars to construct a $2.4 billion football neighborhood 14 miles south in Brook Park, across from the airport and where the old Ford plant once stood.

    The Haslams have been vague on their intentions after it was announced, in April, they secured the rights to buy 176 acres of land east of I-71 big enough for a ballpark village to stand. The move, seen by Thursday’s panelists as a chess ploy, has nevertheless prodded local politicians, from Mayor Justin Bibb to Councilman Kazy, to ensure that Cleveland doesn’t lose—with some PTSD—the Browns to a southwest suburb. (Bibb has said his preference is for the Browns to stay downtown, and has argued the city has put forth what, is in their opinion, a good deal for the city and the team).)

    It’s what seemed to beckon Kazy, who was the face of Council’s emphasis of the 1996 Art Modell Law that attempts to protect cities from billionaires seeking to pick up their team and leave, to gather three experts on stadium deals to espouse the starry-eyed Clevelander’s wish for a shiny new domed megapalace. Like Nissan Stadium in Nashville. Or Jerry’s World in Dallas. Or Los Angeles’ behemoth that is AT&T Stadium.

    click to enlarge Matheson (right) brought hard data to back up the panel's bottom line: expensive sports facilities are bad public investments for a city in general. - Mark Oprea

    Mark Oprea

    Matheson (right) brought hard data to back up the panel’s bottom line: expensive sports facilities are bad public investments for a city in general.

    Sensing some in the crowd yearned for a Taylor Swift-level echelon of concerts, or say another Rolling Stones stopover, Matheson was quick to shut down the perception of huge change with some hard data. From 2002 to 2022, he and Humphreys found, Cleveland Browns Stadium hosted 12 concerts. Detroit’s dome hosted 38. Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, 31. (And two Super Bowls, in 2006 and 2012.)

    The bottom line for the two visiting professors, who speak regularly against city-subsidized stadium deals, was evident: the billions of dollars that go into inviting a Swiftie World Tour doesn’t produce a sound return in investment. They quoted a Chicago economist: “It would be better to drop [money] from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark.”

    “So if you said, ‘Well, look. There’s so much more you can do with an indoor stadium,” Matheson said. “Well, yeah: one more concert [a year] here. You might get a men’s basketball Final Four. And a Super Bowl—but you’ll get one.”

    For Silliman, the former chair of the Gateway Economic Development Co. who recently published a 600-page memoir-slash-stadium exposé on Cleveland’s own chaotic history with sports stadiums, the more sensible route was to convince the Haslams, the city and its denizens to reframe Cleveland Browns Stadium in the historical vein of Fenway Park in Boston, or Wrigley Field in Chicago.

    Which meant, he said, doubling that dollar stream Cuyahoga County residents have been using for stadium upkeep since 1990. The tax on booze and cigarettes. The tax on concerts and shows. The tax on parking lots and car rentals.

    “You know, our sin tax has never been adjusted for inflation,” Silliman, who was an adviser to former Mayor Mike White in the 1990s, said. “If you were to double the annual amount available for each sports facility that would take it from $4.5 million per facility, to about $9 million.”

    Silliman, like Kazy himself, reminded everyone in attendance that he was first and foremost a Cleveland sports traditionalist.

    And believed that, in reality, most Clevelanders had more practical priorities than the Haslam Brook Park renderings. (Only five percent of members of the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus thought the public wanted to or should pay for a new stadium in the first place.)

    “If you ask the average ticket buyer at Cleveland Brown Stadium,” Silliman said, cracking a smile, “they would say, just give us a team that’s consistently competing for the playoffs.”

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    Mark Oprea

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