The Cleveland Browns showed the public on Tuesday what it has already been shopping to public officials and civic leaders in private: renderings of a new, roofed stadium in Brook Park.
As the fans digest the images of the massive project, it’s not clear whether key elected officials will open taxpayer coffers to turn the suburban industrial site into the new home of the Dawg Pound.
In a promotional video on the team’s website, a $2.4 billion football cathedral sits in the middle of a retail-and-residential lifestyle district, flanked by copious stretches of parking lots. The NFL franchise left little doubt that it would rather relocate to Brook Park than take City Hall’s offer to stay in a renovated lakefront stadium.
“We have invested heavily in exploring this path and remain engaged with the City of Cleveland regarding a potential renovation plan,” the team said in a letter to fans on its website, “but it remains a complex and challenging proposition.”
Crucial details from the Browns’ months of deliberations did not make it into the team’s letter.
The Browns’ announcement does not lay out how exactly the public would shoulder its $1.2 billion share of the Brook Park costs. Nor did it include images of the renovated lakefront stadium that is Mayor Justin Bibb’s preferred future home for the team.
Who pays for a new Browns Stadium in Brook Park?
The team would assemble $1.2 billion in private financing for the project, with the public picking up the other half.
The Browns said the team was “not looking to tap into existing taxpayer-funded streams” for the Brook Park facility. Instead, the team would turn to “innovative funding mechanisms with local, county, and state officials that would leverage the fiscal impact of the project,” the letter said.
The letter did not spell out what those mechanisms were, or how they would produce enough revenue to cover the public’s $1.2 billion side of the construction price. The sketches released by the Browns show retail and hotels around the new stadium that could generate new economic development and bolster the potential revenue of the project.
But among supporters of a lakefront renovation inside and outside City Hall, there’s skepticism that the Brook Park project will generate the tax dollars necessary to make the financing work.
One critic of the Brook Park proposal is Ken Silliman, the longtime chief of staff to former Mayor Frank Jackson who also took part in stadium negotiations under Mayor Mike White. Silliman told Signal Cleveland that he believed the Brook Park project would poach events from the Cavaliers’ arena, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
“I cannot see how anyone can justify spending any public dollars – let alone over a billion public dollars – into a new venue that will hurt businesses in downtown and Cuyahoga County,” Silliman wrote in an email. “Local governments are facing a breaking point where they can no longer keep up with the demands of sports franchises for new facilities or renovations of existing facilities.”
The FieldHouse, which underwent a major renovation in 2018, offers one example of how arena revenues can finance a project. Cuyahoga County took on $140 million in debt through the sale of bonds, splitting repayment costs with the Cavaliers.
Cleveland and the county are paying down their share of the debt using admission taxes and a portion of the sales taxes raised at the facility. There are other funding sources, too. The county redirected a part of its hotel bed tax collections to the construction. It also dipped into leftover funds from the convention center project that came from countywide sales tax revenue.
The Browns’ Brook Park proposal is many times larger than the arena renovation: potentially $1.2 billion in public debt rather than $70 million.
Although the Browns’ letter references Cuyahoga County, Executive Chris Ronayne has not said whether his administration would pitch in at Brook Park – for instance, by selling bonds or committing the project’s sales tax revenue to debt payments. The county is already building a $750 million jail using a key portion of its sales tax revenue, and there are mounting stadium financial obligations at the FieldHouse.
Another difference between the FieldHouse project and a potential stadium in Brook Park is the admission tax. Brook Park charges a 3% admission tax, well below Cleveland’s 8% tax. (Cleveland increased its admission tax in the 1990s to pay for the current Browns Stadium.)
One other public funding tool that relies on project revenues – but wasn’t part of the FieldHouse project – is tax-increment financing, also known as a TIF. In a typical TIF, the property taxes collected on new construction are used to pay for the project itself.
Currently, the former Ford engine plant in Brook Park that could become the Browns’ new home is valued at $25.4 million by Cuyahoga County. It produces just less than $740,000 a year in property taxes.
If a traditional TIF were applied to the land, taxes collected on any newly created property value above $25.4 million would go toward the project. The property owner would still have to pay the underlying $740,000 in taxes for Brook Park schools and county services as usual.
What would the Browns walk away from on the lakefront?
The Browns have produced renderings of a potential lakefront renovation, but did not release them on Tuesday.
One person who has seen the renderings described the lakefront proposal to Signal Cleveland this week as a “dramatic renovation” – “essentially a reconstruction as opposed to a renovation.” The person asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the discussions.
While the stadium would remain open-air, it would be wrapped in a new glass skin that shields the interior from the elements. The design change would allow for more open and spacious concourses inside.
In the Browns’ illustrations, Cleveland’s proposed land bridge would connect directly to the stadium, the person said. The linkage would create an “open lawn” space outside the stadium for events such as summer movie showings.
The cost for such a renovation would come in at $1 billion to $1.2 billion, the Browns have told local officials. Of that, the team would ask the public to cover half the cost, or $500 million to $600 million.
The Browns did not describe the potential lakefront designs in its letter. But the message to fans suggested that the team saw downsides to the idea. The letter said the lakefront project “requires major infrastructure moves to improve our operational and fan experience challenges.”
On the other hand, the Browns’ letter emphasized what the team saw as the upsides of Brook Park.
“The Brook Park site is the most compelling option for a dome for several reasons: its central location for our regional fan base, its proximity to downtown, the RTA and the airport, and its strong existing infrastructure,” the letter read. “The large footprint is also ripe for major economic development and supports ample parking and optimized ingress/egress for our visitors.”
