Cleveland mayor responds to Haslams as public spat over Browns' new stadium intensifies

The public spat between the Cleveland Browns and the City of Cleveland continued Wednesday with Cleveland mayor Justin Bibb accusing Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam of making misleading statements and calling the Browns proposal to use $1.2 billion in taxpayer money to help build an indoor stadium in suburban Brook Park the Haslam scheme.

Advertisement The city wants the Browns to stay in Cleveland specifically in a remodeled stadium in the same downtown location as the current Huntington Bank Field.

The Browns in 2024 went public with their plans to build a new indoor facility approximately 13 miles away in Brook Park and have doubled down on those plans in multiple public forums .

On Tuesday, the Browns and Haslam Sports Group released another letter declaring their intentions to build a state of the art indoor stadium in Brook Park.

That letter coincided with the Browns amending their federal complaint vs.

the citys attempt to keep the Browns in Cleveland using the Modell Law, an Ohio law that placed conditions on how teams can leave their publicly financed facilities.

That law stems from the original Browns 1996 move to Baltimore under then-owner Art Modell.

In January, the city sued the Browns in an attempt to enforce the Modell Law, which requires a team that takes taxpayer money and plays in a tax-supported facility to either obtain the citys permission or allow the city and others to purchase the team before moving away from that facility.

The Browns allege that the city has been misguiding Clevelanders by inaccurately conflating the Brook Park project with Art Modell breaking a lease and moving a team to an entirely different state.

In a statement released via social media and to local news outlets, Bibb said the city has a viable proposal to keep the Browns playing in 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.

In addition to calling it the Haslam scheme, Bibb called the Brook Park plan a ploy that would raise your taxes, make it more expensive for you to attend games and steal events away from downtown.

Advertisement The current stadium lease runs through 2028.

The Haslams have been clear that the Browns are not leaving Northeast Ohio but have no realistic downtown options.

Last summer, the Browns first released drawings, videos and statements championing the benefits of the proposed indoor facility, for which the Haslams have proposed a 50/50 public and private split on the proposed price tag of $2.4 billion.

The Haslams generally only speak publicly about the state of the organization twice a year.

One of those is at the NFLs annual meeting, which begins on the final weekend of March.

(Photo of Jimmy Haslam: Jason Miller/Getty Images).

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