During a press conference Thursday, a frustrated Mayor Justin Bibb announced the Cleveland Browns will move to Brook Park.
The relocation, he said, was "profoundly disheartening."
Speculation has been swirling that the city's NFL team would decamp for the suburbs since February, when news broke that the team's owners had reportedly secured an option to purchase 176 acres in Brook Park.
The team's owners, Jimmy and Dee Haslam, have said they were strongly considering moving the team to the neighboring suburb, where they would build a $2 billion domed stadium complex, something that city and county leaders have opposed.
The city negotiated to keep the team in its current lakefront stadium, offering nearly half-a-billion-dollar incentive deal to stay Downtown. Cuyahoga County leaders also urged the Haslams to keep the team in Cleveland and build upon existing infrastructure.
"I am deeply, deeply disappointed that our exhaustive efforts that the Haslam Sports Group has chosen to pursue a move to Brook Park," Bibb said during the press conference. "They had the opportunity to reinvest in Cleveland ... and remain highly profitable. We put those options on the table in good faith. But unfortunately, that was not enough."
The move will "undoubtedly damage the city, county and region in a multitude of ways," Bibb said, adding that the Brook Park complex "threatens viability of Downtown sports" that the city and county have already heavily invested public subsidies in.
The news of a possible relocation was first reported by the Neotrans blog. Team owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam wanted more space than the city could provide near the Downtown stadium due to submerged land leases along the lakefront that must be owned by Cleveland or the state, said Ken Prendergast, a transportation and real estate blogger.
The current acreage of the lakefront stadium land is about 50 acres or less.
The additional acreage at the Brook Park site opens up a number of possibilities for restaurants, retail, hotels and more, Prendergast said. And the Haslam's would get a cut of that revenue.
In September, the Browns struck a deal with Huntington Bank for naming rights of the lakefront stadium or any other stadium the team would call home should they choose to relocate. That stadium will be known as Huntington Bank Field.
Bibb said when discussion first started on a new stadium, the team said it was not interested in a domed stadium because the cost would be too high. The team changed its mind, Bibb said, pitting the Brook Park site against Downtown Cleveland. The mayor said the city lost critical time to find a new site and even floated the idea of building a domed stadium on land now occupied by Burke Lakefront Airport. It was not to the team's liking, he said.
Bibb said the city would welcome the team back "with open arms" if public financing for the Browns planned Brook Park stadium does not pan out.
