CLEVELAND, Ohio — From 1974 to 1994, the Cleveland Cavaliers played their home games at Litchfield Coliseum. But during that time, the sleepy little town between Cleveland and Akron never transformed into the kind of entertainment district that sports stadiums often see today. It was never designed that way.
In fact, this location on the prairie between Interstate 271 and Interstate 77 was specifically chosen to bring together people who can get to the arena within an hour’s drive, and to get there as quickly and efficiently as possible. It was designed to be accessible.
“The idea was to build a large parking lot around the facility. So there’s no retail there, no restaurants, no shops,” said Smith College economics professor who is consulting on stadium plans. said Andrew Zimbalist. “If people arrived at the arena and were hungry, they had to go inside and buy a hot dog or drink a beer.”
“It was a completely different model. So I don’t think what happened 50 years ago has anything to do with this.”
this Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam are considering building a domed stadium estimated at more than $2 billion on a 176-acre site in Brook Park with an option to buy, but at the same time. They also maintain a positive attitude towards renovating the existing stadium on the lake. The Haslams have not released specific plans or renderings for a potential dome project, but their comments this week indicate that given league-wide trends and the size of the site, their concept is for a large parking lot. It suggests it’s more than just an isolated stadium in the middle. .
Dee Haslam told cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot and four other reporters covering the team: “We want to see what our community can be and the jobs it can provide.” “And we can envision just the development around it and the growth that can come from it.” . “I look at it very positively.”
Projects like this have the potential to “transform our region,” Haslam said. That will almost certainly include plans for restaurants, bars, shopping and all sorts of other attractions that people can enjoy not just on game days but all year round.
Zimbalist said the Brook Park dome would need to be part of a planned district with mixed-use development around the stadium for it to have “even the slightest chance of making economic sense.” Says.
Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of the Holy Cross who studies public stadium deals, agreed, saying most new suburban stadiums feature an adjacent entertainment district.
“The owner wants to be in the real estate business as well as the sports business,” he says.
Of the NFL’s 10 suburban stadiums, nearly all are located near existing entertainment mixed-use developments or land currently being developed for that purpose. This trend started in his early 2000s with the New England Patriots, who played their games in Foxboro, 30 miles south of Boston.
The Patriots are owned by the Kraft family, who built their own stadium there and left it “basically surrounded by a sea of parking lots for almost a whole decade,” Matheson said. . By 2007, they realized they could get a higher return on their investment.
Result is, Patriot Place, a 1.35 million square foot lifestyle center with nearly 30 stores, including a huge Bass Pro Shop, more than 20 bars and restaurants, a 14-screen movie theater, a bowling alley, two hotels, and even a medical center.This complex attracts more than 9 million people each year
“We were the first, and I think we were very successful,” Patriot Place general manager Brian Earley said. WGRZ-TV in Buffalo in 2022.
But Patriot Place may not be the best example of what could happen at Brook Park. The Foxboro property is more than twice the size of the property the Haslams are eyeing. And because of its isolated location along a four-lane state highway, it can sometimes feel deserted, like when I strolled along the boardwalk on a random Thursday in 2018.
But perhaps more remarkable is that Gillette Stadium and Patriot Place were operated almost entirely with private funds. The Haslams are pushing for a public-private partnership to renovate the lakeside stadium and are thought to be hoping to do the same with the Dome.
“I can’t imagine the owners of the Cleveland Browns building this with their own money,” Matheson said.
Some people point to suburban Phoenix as an example of a thriving stadium entertainment development.of Westgate Entertainment District It is located across the street from State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, home of the NFL’s Cardinals. The property bills itself as a “livable, walkable outdoor oasis” offering an eclectic mix of retail, dining and entertainment, as well as loft-style apartments and several hotels. Highlights include approximately 50 restaurants and bars, a 20-screen movie theater, Dave & Buster’s, and a pickleball bar.
But like Patriot Place, Westgate is a private operation. This stadium is not a very similar comparison, as it was built as a complement to not one, but two publicly funded stadiums (the other being the 19,000 seat Desert Diamond Arena).
on paper, Texas Live!, a vibrant $250 million entertainment complex in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, may seem like a better harbinger if a dome is built at Brook Park. But while it was developed as a public-private partnership, Texas Live! focuses on nightlife and features 12 restaurants, bars, clubs, and live music venues, a stark contrast to the atmosphere of Brook’s Park.
Not to mention, the area is adjacent to three stadiums: the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium, Globe Life Field, where Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers play, and Choctaw Stadium, home to professional rugby, soccer, and spring football teams. Masu.
Perhaps the Browns organization could glean something from the league’s two existing domed stadiums in the Midwest, Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and Ford Field in Detroit?
Matheson points out that the Brook Park option is different from a downtown stadium, which would be used as an anchor to foster organic urban development. “[In suburban projects]there’s usually not a lot of stuff there to begin with, so you have to artificially create it with the idea that if you build it, they’ll come.”
Instead, he said, the template the Browns and their fans should look to is the one that MLB’s Atlanta Braves successfully pulled off several years ago.
“It shows what’s possible, but it also shows the shortcomings very clearly.”
In 2017, the Braves were lured to Cobb County, 16 miles northwest of downtown, as the centerpiece of a $1 billion mixed-use development funded by $300 million in taxpayer funds. To describe that scope in Northeast Ohio terms, think Crocker Park or Pinecrest, where he would add a 41,000-seat baseball stadium and his 4,000-seat concert venue.
The projects, collectively known as Twist Park and The Battery Atlanta, have been touted as a financial success.among them Last year’s annual report, Cobb County government reported that the ballpark district hosted more than 10 million visitors and generated $38 million in tax revenue during fiscal year 2022. Additionally, the Braves earned $59 million in rental income from battery tenants in 2023, making it their third-largest source of revenue. of income, The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
But there’s a big caveat behind all this. Experts say these developments will not generate new spending.
“(The Battery’s) success comes at the expense of other restaurants and retailers in the county,” Matheson said. “There was nothing new for Atlanta as a whole, and there was nothing new for Cobb County. We redirected where spending was being done in metro Atlanta.
“But counties are still on the hook for these huge subsidies.”
Will Haslam be able to replicate anything close to Battery? Again, this may not be an apples-to-apples comparison. Trust Park hosts 81 baseball games. That’s far more events than could be booked at the Dome at Brook Park under the best of circumstances. The Atlanta metropolitan area is also much more populous than Cleveland and has a warmer climate.
“NFL stadiums are really difficult to get right,” Matheson said. “Even the best people sit in the dark for most of the year, so it’s hard to build a neighborhood around them.”
“I think that’s really unreasonable,” Zimbalist said of the Browns’ desire for a suburban stadium. “I’d like to study the area they’re building in and the mixed-use development plans. But I’m very skeptical and pessimistic at first. It will depend on what (the financing) is.”
That much is clear. If the Dome were to create an entertainment district in Brook Park, it would require a kind of intent and momentum that wasn’t present when Litchfield Coliseum opened decades ago.
“You don’t just need a plan for the structure you want to see,” Zimbalist said. “You need commitment from private capital. What often happens is that the owner just has an idea of what will happen, but there is no commitment.”
“If you give it enough public subsidy, there’s no reason it can’t work,” Matheson said. “The real question is: is there a rational reason why we should put the public money necessary to make it work into this? We don’t have it, and we have a lot of evidence that it tends to be a poor public investment.”
