What’s more valuable to Northeast Ohio? An open-air, lakefront football stadium used a few times a year? Or a suburban roofed stadium that doubles as a year-round event center complete with hotel rooms, apartments and restaurants?
That’s the heart of the economic case that the Cleveland Browns are laying out as the team tries to win public support – and taxpayer investment – for a move to Brook Park. The Haslam Sports Group, which owns the team, walked news media this week through the findings of an economic impact study it commissioned from RCLCO, a real estate consulting firm.
The team provided Signal Cleveland with a copy of the study’s executive summary.
The headline of that study is a 10-figure boast: that a Brook Park stadium and surrounding Browns village would be able to claim credit for $1.2 billion in annual direct spending. That dollar figure rests on the assumption that a multi-phase development around a new stadium – with hundreds of residential units and hotel rooms – succeeds.
Of that money, $966 million – or about 80% – of the spending would occur at the Haslam Sports Group’s Brook Park site. The remaining $260 million would be spent throughout the county, including in downtown Cleveland, the team argues.
The Browns’ study serves as a rebuttal to a report released by Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration last month. The city’s study said that a Brook Park stadium would siphon business out of downtown and compete with such venues as Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and the convention center.
Erin Talkington, who heads RCLCO’s sports and entertainment practice, acknowledged that money would leave downtown on NFL game days. But visitors to Brook Park events still could spend money downtown or stay in hotels there, the RCLCO study said.
“There will be businesses downtown that feel like they individually struggle because they didn’t have as much game day business,” Talkington said. “But there’s no business downtown that can only survive on 10-14 days a year with four hours of traffic.”
On the whole, a 60,000-seat indoor venue that can host events year-round is better for the region and downtown, she argued. A domed stadium would be able to compete for concerts that might pass over the 19,400-seat Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, according to Talkington.
“What we think we’re adding to the market is many other major event days as well as just a much greater number of visitors that are spread over more days of the year,” she said.
David Jenkins, the Browns’ chief operating officer, talked up the possibility that a suburban domed stadium would attract new events to the region while freeing up Cleveland to redevelop its lakefront.
“The lakefront, without the intrusion of the stadium, can be redeveloped and reimagined, creating new sources for economic impact in Cleveland,” he said in a statement provided by the team.
‘Decades-old consensus’ on limited benefits from sports
Economists who study stadiums typically reject sports franchises’ rosy projections. That was the thrust of a 2022 review of academic studies published in the Journal of Economic Surveys.
“The large subsidies commonly devoted to constructing professional sports venues are not justified as worthwhile public investments,” the authors of that review wrote. The paper noted a “decades-old consensus of very limited economic impacts of professional sports teams and stadiums.”
The review did note that stadiums can come with intangible benefits such as team pride, though those benefits are hard to count and may not exceed taxpayer subsidies. While the area immediately around a stadium might see an economic boost, that money may just be moving from one part of a metropolitan area to another, the 2022 review argued.
“Most spending on game tickets, concessions, and associated hospitality near a sports venue would have occurred in other parts of the host jurisdiction without the presence of a pro sports team,” the review said.
Nevertheless, the Browns maintain that a Brook Park stadium has the potential to attract customers from outside the region. The team said that out-of-state visitors made up 40% of the attendees at WWE SummerSlam, the Rolling Stones’ concert and the Billy Joel-Rod Stewart show.
Cleveland’s study cast doubt on whether Northeast Ohio’s stagnant population could support yet another “lifestyle center” suburban development. Talkington argued that while the East Side is saturated in such projects – think Legacy Village in Lyndhurst and Pinecrest in Orange – there’s room for more on the West Side, where Crocker Park is the big player.
A Brook Park stadium district likely wouldn’t feature the sort of shopping seen at those other centers. Instead, the project would focus on entertainment, bars and restaurants, Talkington said.
How would taxpayers shoulder a new stadium?
The Browns’ and RCLCO’s study does not definitively answer the big question hanging over the project: How would the public pay for its $1.2 billion share of a $2.4 billion stadium?
Talkington said that the spending at the Brook Park stadium district itself could count toward the public’s share. While specifics are still being worked out, that might be from sales taxes or hotel bed taxes, for example, she said.
Stadium-watchers and City Council members are also waiting to see if Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget proposal in February includes money for the project.
The team’s study includes another argument in favor of a Brook Park stadium, one that speaks to the taxpayer cost. If the football stadium moves to the suburbs, the City of Cleveland would no longer be on the hook for construction debt and repair costs.
Bibb and Ronayne respond
Bibb and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne oppose a move to Brook Park. Their offices issued statements Thursday afternoon holding firm to their negotiating positions.
“While the Cleveland Browns’ economic impact report suggests potential benefits to the region with their move to Brook Park, we don’t need a study to understand the fundamental truth: fewer people in our downtown area means less vibrancy and economic activity for our city and our businesses,” the city’s statement read.
Meanwhile the county government cast the study as an attempt to “justify an unprecedented sum of taxpayer money.”
“Economic impact studies commissioned by organizations with a vested interest often present overly optimistic projections that do not reflect the financial realities faced by local governments and taxpayers,” the statement from Ronayne’s office read.
