Is there an alternate downtown site for a new stadium for the Browns?

New report says that the City of Cleveland may offer up Burke Lakefront Airport to keep the Browns in downtown.

The NFL is an arms race as teams work to find the right mix of players and coaches to bring home a Super Bowl trophy.

While bringing home a championship trophy is cool, the NFL is also a business, one that generated an estimated $20 billion in 2023.

And as much as the league’s owners like to talk about how much they care about the fans and the cities they play in, none of them are doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, as no one goes into business with the idea of losing money.

This brings us to the latest in the saga of the Cleveland Browns, the City of Cleveland, and the ongoing discussion around the future home of the team.

To get everyone up to speed, in the past few months team officials have:

• Kicked around the idea of buying 176 acres of land in the Cleveland suburb of Brook Park as a potential site for a domed stadium
• Reportedly pitched Cleveland City Council on a renovation plan for the current stadium that would need $500 million in public funding
• Stated they are open to either renovating the current stadium or building a dome, depending on which option makes the most sense
• Seen Cleveland City Councilman Brian Kazy introduce legislation requiring the team to follow the state’s so-called Modell Law
• Reportedly shared what a domed stadium and entertainment district in Brook Park might look like

It is the entertainment district portion of the plan that makes everything a bit more complicated as just having a new stadium does not cut it in today’s NFL. Owners want the ability to develop the land around the stadium to their liking and have the profits from that development land on their financial reports.

That puts a kink in the city’s desire to keep the Browns downtown as there is currently no room to build around the current site of Cleveland Browns Stadium.

City officials might have a trump card to play if they can figure out what to do with Burke Lakefront Airport, which lies just to the east of the current stadium.

According to the latest from Ken Prendergast at NEOtrans blog, city officials have been kicking around the idea of closing the airport and offering up the site as a location for a new stadium with surrounding space for commercial development. And there is a lot of potential space as Burke takes up 450 acres of prime space along Lake Erie, compared to the 176 acres the Haslam’s are eyeing in Brook Park.

It is not as easy as Mayor Justin Bibb posting “Closed” signs at the airport and letting the construction crews get to work, as Prendergast highlights:

Any Burke closure plan depends on funding improvements to Cuyahoga County Airport and/or possibly other small airports in the region to offer the facilities that are the same or better than what Burke has.

The Federal Aviation Administration requires all Commercial Service Airports like Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to have a reliever airport in the same geographical area and to meet specific design and size minimums with regards to runway length, tarmac area, hangar spaces and terminal spaces. Burke has it; other nearby airports don’t. FAA probably will not allow Burke’s closure until another nearby airport like Cuyahoga County’s is expanded.

There are certainly positives to the idea of using Burke as a potential site as it keeps the Browns in downtown Cleveland (which city officials prefer) and it turns what is basically an empty space into something that the public can at least use in some fashion.

It is all just talk at the moment, of course, but with each passing day, we get closer to the team and the city having to reach a decision. The Browns current lease does not expire until after the 2028 season, and the two sides can always work out a short-term extension, but whatever option they land on – renovate or new construction – is going to take time. And the longer this drags out, the more there is a chance that something new will arise to complicate the situation.