Report: Browns exploring sites for new downtown stadium
Jun. 18—They don't make sports stadiums like they used to.
The Haslam Sports Group, run by Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam plus their son-in-law, JW Johnson, is exploring the benefits of building a new stadium for their football team rather than renovating FirstEnergy Stadium, according to a report by neo-trans.blog.
Tentative sites for a new stadium include land west of North Coast Harbor and East Ninth Street, west of West Third Street and north of the bluff overlooking the railroad tracks according to the report. In other words, the new stadium would not be far from where the current one stands.
A new stadium would allow for the current one to be demolished. The land it occupies would be developed into retail stores and housing to create revenue to help fund a new domed stadium.
FirstEnergy Stadium opened in 1999 as Cleveland Browns Stadium to accommodate the expansion team the NFL awarded Cleveland after Art Modell move the original Browns to Baltimore in 1996.
The stadium was partially funded by a "sin tax" on alcohol and tobacco in a vote approved overwhelmingly by Cuyahoga County voters (72 percent to 28 percent) on Nov. 7, 1995 — one day after Modell stood on a stage in Baltimore to announce he was moving the team. The sin tax originally was designed to renovate old Cleveland Stadium. But Cleveland city officials reached an agreement with the NFL that the team replacing the former Browns would be an expansion team rather than a relocated one if a new stadium was built.
Ground was broken for the new stadium in May 1997. It opened in July 1999. The first game played was a preseason contest against the Vikings on Aug. 21, 1999.
The Stadium was renamed FirstEnergy Stadium in 2013. Renovations in 2014 and 2015 improved the experience for fans. But it is still one of the most spartan stadiums in the NFL.
Browns spokesman Peter John-Baptiste told neotrans that the blog site was "a little too far out in front of the story," but this development is not new. Dee Haslam talked about the possibility of a new stadium with a group of reporters at the team's training complex in Berea back in 2018.
"The main thing is to start the conversation, at some point," she said. "I don't know that we're ready to start the conversation, but we are ready to get all the information we can about what's possible. So I think it's really important to find out what's possible.
"There could be a lot of great ideas that we might not be able to do because it's not feasible for one reason or another," Haslam said. "I don't want to get the horse in front of the cart until we're knowledgeable enough to know, because we're not informed enough to know right now. But we do know that we have a desire to make a bigger impact on the future of Cleveland."
The lease on FirstEnergy Stadium expires after the 2028 season.
