Browns Brook Park Dome Wouldn't Host Nearly as Many Events as Haslams Promise, City-Commissioned Study Says

Renderings of a proposed dome in Brook Park Credit: Cleveland Browns

Last month, Mayor Justin Bibb announced Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam had decided to move their football team to a new $2.4-billion stadium village in Brook Park instead of working with Cleveland to renovate the existing stadium or find a site for a new build.

Bibb put an emphasis on what it would mean to downtown: “The shifting economic activity to Brook Park will weaken—weaken these [existing] public assets and be a net negative. Not a positive, but a net negative for the region.”

The resulting financial hit, an economic report commissioned by the city and released Monday details, will be substantial: Cleveland would lose roughly $30 million a year in a range of revenue; admissions, hotel and property taxes; spending in downtown bars and restaurants; along all fees associated with the lease at Huntington Bank Field.

A driving force in the Haslams’ decision was to build a dome that would be home to more than just Sunday home games.

If the Brook Park stadium hosts “more than 50 non-NFL events” per year—as the Haslams hope to have—then tens of thousands of concertgoers that would head downtown for Billy Joel or WWE’s Summer Slam may no longer step foot in Cleveland’s limits altogether.

And neither would those artists.

“The only way to achieve the goal of 50 annual events is to draw patronage from Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, Progressive Field, Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, I-X Center, and other major venues, including conference hotels,” the report reads.

“Therefore, the combined losses in economic activity to the city from losing [the] current stadium and major venue patronage would more than double.”

In addition, as Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and Bibb have noted, the city and county have already poured hundreds of millions of public dollars into Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, Progressive Field, the convention center and the Hilton hotel.

But the question at hand is whether the Haslams could actually draw those 50 annual events, which would justify their (inflated) economic impact estimates.

The study says it’s not likely.

Comparable markets in the Midwest have nowhere near that number: the Detroit Lions’ Ford Field has about 12 non-football events a year; U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis has about six; and Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Indianapolis Colts play, has just four.

“Based on the size of [Cleveland], the Brook Park stadium could expect to host around four major events and four or five smaller events,” the report says.

So, nine—which definitely isn’t the 50 proposed.

David Sangree, a Cleveland-based expert in the hospitality industry, told Scene that he expects a “modest negative” for Downtown if or when the Browns leave. But nowhere near the chaotic predictions like the impact report suggests.

“I mean, the FieldHouse alone attracts over two-hundred events a year,” Sangree said. “So even if five or 10 move to the Brook Park stadium because they think they could attract bigger numbers, there’s definitely a potential that there are additional ones that could come to town that weren’t coming before—because there was no capacity at the FieldHouse.”

In other words, Taylor Swift in January. A Billy Joel in Brook Park, not on the lake.

Even if that means millions a year lost to Haslam-owned hotels and restaurants. “Again,” Sangree said. “That’s why I said it’s a modest negative” for Downtown Cleveland.

But, as the report notes, there are only so many of those types of events.

Over at the I-X Center, about a three-minute car ride from where the Brook Park stadium village is planned to rise, Scott McGorty feels somewhat of the same: events at Haslam Town are more likely to work in tandem with car and cat shows than detract away from them.

“I don’t see it as competition at all,” McGorty, a spokesperson for the I-X Center, told Scene.

“You’re looking at a stadium versus a consumer show venue or a convention center—these are two different types of venues,” he added. He pointed to the WWE Summer Slam, which ran at Huntington Bank Field this summer, as more of a reason for collaboration. “Like, what about a fan fest type of situation? I think we could complement each other very well.”

This, however, ignores the fact RV shows and the like are exactly the type of small and mid-sized events the Haslams would hope to attract, a source familiar with their thinking told Scene.

Which emphasizes the study’s conclusion that the economic hit to downtown will be real, despite what others say.

“Given weak market conditions and slow regional economic growth, the success of the proposed development will depend on its ability to draw demand from other parts of the county and region, putting Downtown Cleveland especially at risk,” the study reads. “In other words, the proposed development will effectively shift economic activity.”