In what may be the most-watched moment of his mayoralty, Mayor Justin Bibb faced the spotlight alone. Tieless and frowning, he shared news that by then was hardly a surprise. The Browns are planning to leave Cleveland for Brook Park.
No other elected official joined the mayor for his news conference Thursday at City Hall. Even the portraits of former mayors – usually hanging in the Red Room – were in storage for office renovations. Bibb’s back was to a bare wall. This was his message to deliver and his political hit to take.
So the mayor swung his fists. He painted the Haslams as team owners who chose their own wants at Cleveland’s expense. A new Brook Park entertainment complex, Bibb argued, would compete with publicly funded downtown venues – that is, the Cavaliers’ Rocket Mortgage Field House and the county convention center.
Bibb put a number on the cost of the move: $30 million, so he claimed, in lost annual economic impact. (He did not mention that the current stadium has cost City Hall somewhere around $350 million – or $14 million a year on average – in debt payments, repairs and other expenses since 1998.)
Dee and Jimmy Haslam, in the midst of another dismal football season, didn’t strike back. In a statement on the team’s website, they called their conversations with Bibb “productive and collaborative.” They cast a move to Brook Park as a win-win – the Browns get their roofed stadium, and Cleveland gets more lakefront land to develop.
Voters have yet to weigh in on Bibb’s handling of negotiations. Come next year’s election, will they see him as the mayor who lost the Browns? Or will they blame the team’s billionaire ownership? It’s hard to imagine a challenger winning City Hall on a platform of more handouts for stadiums.
Perhaps a candidate could knock the mayor for his restraint. He recited a lightly poetic line about caring more for Clevelanders’ roofs than the Browns’ dome. But in this populist era, Bibb did not assail billionaires or use terms like “corporate greed” or “the 1%.” (His written statement included a dig that the Browns were trying to “maximize profits,” but he did not speak those words on camera.)
Leave it to Brian Kazy to howl like the Dawg Pound. The Ward 16 council member issued a statement accusing the team of “looking to pit city against city to fleece taxpayers out of money to build a shiny new fortress.”
In an interview with WKYC, Council President Blaine Griffin played the role of even-keeled color commentator. He nudged the city to make use of the Art Modell Law, a brief piece of state code that in theory gives Ohio cities leverage over departing teams. Griffin also questioned whether the Browns can really put together the $2.4 billion for a new stadium – half of which would come from the public. The Bibb administration shares his doubts.
The mayor said he’d welcome the team back to the table if Brook Park doesn’t pan out. But there were signs of Browns fatigue at City Hall. As the news swirled on Thursday afternoon, two mayor’s office staffers were overheard cheering the team that has captured Cleveland’s hopes this fall: the Guardians.
