Browns owners confirm they’re mulling a move to Brook Park
ORLANDO, FLA. — The Browns stadium lease expires at the end of 2028, and owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have left no gray area: If Cleveland Browns Stadium can’t be renovated, then options outside of the city are going to be considered.
“I think it’s fair to say … that in all likelihood we’re either going to remodel on the lakefront with an extensive remodel or build a new stadium, which would be a dome,” Jimmy Haslam said this week. “Because if we did go the dome route – I’m not saying we’re doing that vs. remodeling where we are now – it could be used more than 12 times a year.”
A remodel, according to Jimmy Haslam, would come with a price tag of more than $1 billion, which is why this wasn’t the first time the organization indicated it might not continue to play its games at Cleveland Browns Stadium.
But Monday was the first time the Haslams confirmed they were mulling the option of buying a 176-acre parcel of land in Brook Park. It’s located less than a mile from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport and roughly two miles from the Browns’ Berea headquarters.
That land, which was formerly the site of two Ford Motor plants, is situated in an area bordered on three sides by
State Route 237 to the west, Snow Road to the south and I-71 to the east. The Norfolk Southern railroad tracks run between the property and Ohio 237. That acreage, if the Browns were to build on that space, would more than satisfy the needs of a modern stadium. Not only that, but it would address one of the major criticisms of the current site.
“We do not have a lot of parking,” Jimmy Haslam said. “A new stadium, you’d have 12,000 to 15,000 parking spaces, which is dramatically different from what we have now.”
The Browns, be it at their current stadium, which opened in 1999, or the nowdemolished Cleveland Municipal Stadium, have played at the same location since 1946.
“Not one option is above the other,” Dee Haslam said. “But I do think that Cleveland deserves to be thought of as this evolving, forward-thinking, creative city as opposed to not thinking big.”
Jimmy Haslam added that other NFL teams, including the Dallas Cowboys, Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers, don’t play downtown.
Both Haslams ruled out the possibility of finding another site in downtown Cleveland where a new stadium could be constructed. There has previously been speculation that the post office complex, located officially at 2400 Orange Ave., just south of I-77, could be a potential site.