The Browns are moving out of their lakefront home.
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb said Thursday he met with Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslem, who announced their intent to relocate the NFL team to suburban Brook Park despite the city's efforts to keep it in Cleveland.
The Browns considered a $1.1 billion plan from the city to renovate their 25-year-old downtown stadium, but instead chose to build a $2.4 billion dome in Brook Park, about 12 miles south of Cleveland.
The team's lease at its current stadium expires after the 2028 season.
"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," Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam said in a statement. "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.
Last month, the city proposed funding $461 million -- splitting the cost with the Browns -- to upgrade the current stadium and re-develop its surrounding property along Lake Erie.
"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," 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 Browns have only been in their stadium since 1999, when they returned as an expansion team after owner Art Modell moved the franchise to Baltimore four years earlier following a squabble with city officials.
Officials believe the current stadium needs "substantial improvements" for sustainability. The Browns often cite traffic and parking issues among the main reasons to consider a new stadium location.
"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," David Jenkins, chief operating officer of Haslam Sports Group, wrote in the letter last month. "The large footprint is also ripe for major economic development and supports ample parking and optimized ingress/egress for our visitors."
Funding remains an obstacle. The Browns are seeking a public/private partnership for the $2.4 billion project. They're proposing bonds to cover the public portion.
"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," the Haslmas said. "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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
