Wednesday, March 19, 2025 — Cleveland — Mayor Justin M. Bibb released the following statement today:
The Haslams yesterday made misleading statements about the diligent work the city has done over the past three years to revitalize the lakefront, protect taxpayer dollars, and keep football on the lakefront. They want to squander taxpayer dollars to invest over a billion dollars into a domed stadium in Brook Park while openly violating state law.
The City of Cleveland offered nearly half a billion dollars to keep the Browns in the city, based on the Haslams’ original request for a transformed lakefront stadium – a plan they publicly committed to just two years ago. It is disingenuous and insulting to say – as the Haslams do in their recent federal court filing – that the city doesn’t have a competitive plan for the lakefront. In three years, we have raised an unprecedented $150 million for the lakefront, completed a lakefront master plan, created a waterfront development authority, and established new economic development tools to raise hundreds of millions more. The Haslam’s refusal to release their lakefront stadium transformation plan publicly is an affront to taxpayers.
The Haslam scheme pays for itself on the backs of fans. The Haslams need to raise your taxes, make it more expensive for you to attend games, and steal events away from downtown Cleveland to pay for their stadium. The Haslam stadium ploy raises more questions than it answers and makes wild assumptions that will crush taxpayers. Their scheme relies on average ticket prices nearing $700, parking rates north of $100, increasing taxes for hotels, parking, and rental cars, and the assumption thousands of people will pay high rent to live in luxury apartments in the shadow of the airport.
We have offered a viable proposal to keep the Browns playing on the lakefront in a reimagined stadium as the centerpiece of a huge lakefront development – for half the cost to the public of the dome in Brook Park. We have invested hundreds of millions in downtown Cleveland. The Haslam Brook Park scheme will burden taxpayers and damage downtown to benefit billionaires.
