coneflower

It's funny when you think about it. The main rationale for closing Burke is that it does not deliver economic benefit to the city, yet some officials want the Browns to move their stadium to Burke, despite the fact that economic research shows new stadiums also do not provide economic benefit!

I don’t understand why this thing keeps changing every two months? Why not make it brick with some basic ornamentation like the old buildings in the Warehouse District? The more they tweak it the worse it gets

Sure, Northeast Ohio's shrinking/flat population hasn't led to societal collapse but I can't agree it's not a "big deal." We can debate how much growth is ideal, but all the evidence indicates that "no growth" is bad. Since my grandparent's youth, we've lost economic and political influence nationally, concentrated wealth and poverty in completely different cities to create generational inequality that leaves a huge percentage of our population on the sidelines, and I would argue our civic and business leadership is weaker than other regions because many of our best and brightest have left for better opportunities elsewhere. Fewer people means: fewer workers for jobs and employers moving to new regions, fewer caretakers for our seniors and everyone else, developers invest in growing areas in other regions that present better returns, fewer students means closing schools and universities, less tax dollars to maintain all our infrastructure, neighborhoods made up of aging homeowners who can't physically or financially maintain their houses, leading to sinking home values. The one thing that can help with all of these things is growth.

Who watches the watchmen's watchmen?

I think it’s pretty clear now that closing the airport is a long-term project. If I’m Bibb, before I make a decision, I’m trying to determine how realistic it is to get an outcome while I am mayor. No matter what, the FAA likely won’t be quick. Lobbying Congress and getting a bill passed or language in something bigger will be really hard. Hopefully whenever they actually pick a position, especially if it is to close, they make it clear this will take time.

Signal Cleveland says that the FAA is so far not super receptive to the idea of closing the airport. An alternate option is to get Congress to do it. Maybe Justin and Jimmy can work a bipartisan miracle but seems unlikely. Or, worst-case scenario, the city waits until 2036 and moves to shut it down when federal grants run out. Just a long way off. https://signalcleveland.org/cleveland-mayor-justin-bibb-makes-moves-toward-closing-burke-lakefront-airport/

Even if I go with your assertion that it needs $600M in repairs, that still seems like a better deal than spending $2B+ on a completely new building. It’d be like owning an old house that needs a lot of work and deciding rather than fix it, you’re going to spend twice as much to build a new house. Now, if you tell me the stadium repairs are only going to extend the stadium’s life 5 years, that doesn’t sound like a good idea anymore. But can you get 15+ more years out of it? That’s almost to the point when they’d be asking to replace or renovate a NEW stadium. This is the kind of stuff that voters need to understand, assuming we get any vote in the matter.

Let's all agree that putting a dome on the current building is not happening for many reasons. Besides that, what is actually wrong with the building? Is the foundation at risk of giving in? Is the plumbing or electrical beyond repair? I have found no answers to indicate there are issues like this, so I can only conclude the whole problem with the building is the lipstick it's wearing. We can argue until we're blue in the face about where and how much to invest in the Browns' stadium, but there has still not been any clear answer to the "why" besides Jimmy wants to. And if Jimmy and the NFL say it must be so if we want an NFL team, that's fine, but let's at least be upfront about it.

I’m guessing Jimmy wasn’t in a real good mood at today’s meeting with the mayor 😂

I don't see what's wrong with it? The articles I read seemed to indicate it was the retaining wall and two street cutouts vs. one? Edit: Actually, I see a house needs to be demolished for the driveway with a few parking spaces. That would annoy me if I were a neighbor. Why do they need that?

In the article they talk about reinventing themselves to reach the next generation of customers. Building something like this could help them establish GLBC as a lifestyle brand and offer more ways to reach younger customers who aren’t drinking the same way or as much. The current location is a classic and beloved but to me offers a very different experience from what I’ve seen in other cities where people of all generations come and basically hang out for a big chunk of the day having drinks, getting food, playing games, chatting with friends as kids play.

It all adds up to BP lol. They can build that and play at Huntington Bank Fieldhouse Stadium until it’s ready. If CLE tries to play hardball since they are leaving, the team can say “well we could play in Columbus…” and then the fans freak out.

What I meant is they will likely face fewer obstacles and bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Big fish, little pond. In terms of policing/security, that seems solvable with a mixture of private security, local, county and state highway patrol. The mayor was on the radio a couple of weeks ago and he sounded pretty supportive of the project, pointing out this property has been vacant for 12 years and they want to see it get used and this sounds like a good use for it. https://www.brownsnation.com/brook-park-mayor-rejects-1-offer-for-browns-to-build-domed-stadium/ Here is another one where he says he and Ronanye are on “different sidelines” right now. https://www.cleveland19.com/2024/08/14/mayor-brook-park-says-desired-new-stadium-is-not-priority-right-now/?outputType=amp

Regardless of what is theoretically possible, I can’t imagine the Haslams going down this extremely complicated, time-consuming path unless they have no other choice. They are going to want firm commitments, guarantees and realistic timelines that can be priced into the value of the team before they sell a portion to new investors. Brook Park still makes the most sense for their business because they control everything and the government there is always going to cater to their needs and desires. Now, can they pay for it….

I just can’t agree. But forget my revulsion to giant parking lots, this proposal is half-baked and should have been started a long time ago if it would ever actually be an option. How long would executing this take now? I have critiqued the Haslams plenty but expecting them to put their business on hold for an impossible to guess how long amount of time while the government tries to close an airport and completes all the steps described in @KJP’s article is expecting too much. Also, Ronanye just a couple weeks ago said the county can’t afford Brook Park. How is this any more affordable? Lastly, this concept has surely been discussed with the team privately but it comes out in an article like this. Just looks like the government trying to throw spaghetti at the wall to me.

I would reserve space near the rock hall for development and make the rest a park. Turning 100 acres of land into a parking lot literally next to the lake is a travesty.

I’m struggling with the idea of putting 100 acres of parking right on the airport land. I understand the whole property is huge but it hurts my heart. At least in Brook Park that land is all industrial with limited natural amenities. edit: the more I think about this, the less I like it. Why would we go to all the effort of closing the airport to then turn 100 acres into a parking lot. That is stupid. My main beef with Jimmyland is the taxpayers being on the hook for it. But this solution to me is not any better and may be worse because it pigeonholes a very unique property for a generation at least.

I think we’d have a stronger downtown office market if we had more job creation and population growth happening in general. There isn’t much need for proximity for many office jobs in our region, which leads employers to look for locations that are affordable and convenient. Even without WFH, most big companies are connected to national and international markets, which means many of the people a worker interfaces with regularly are not even in our region.

Jimmy did say he wanted innovative funding! Getting more private money into this to take the burden off taxpayers I think would neutralize a lot of the opposition. I am not real smart on this stuff but it seems like a good way for owners to tap into the value of their teams without losing control. And I assume the PE people will buy and sell their holdings periodically to make their own profits as values go up. I would think that would add pressure on teams to maximize their value through big developments like this and/or finding markets with more potential to enter.

This is hard to quantify but seems like a fair critique. I know in some towns, especially small towns, a lot of beautification efforts are done by volunteers and community clubs. Maybe that is something that could help?

I also think pickleball is dumb but every summer more and more people are playing it! It’s been awhile but I went to DC United games at the old RFK stadium and the fans were much different than you’d see at an NFL game. It reminded me of all the kids who scoffed at sports in high school (not meant as an insult!). It was fun!

I didn’t realize Dan Gilbert was part of our bid. They also are part of promoting Tennis in the Land, the women’s pro tennis tournament that just wrapped up. Intriguing and very cool. I actually think some of this stuff could help us attract more people to move here, especially folks who aren’t into the traditional sports or are passionate about women’s sports specifically.

I thought they were shutting down the portion between Detroit and Church?

Story in Crains about 43 acres of old power plant lakefront land Avon Lake is seeking to redevelop. I post it here because it’ll be really interesting to see what interest they get. Maybe a sign of what Cleveland would see once Jimmy makes up his mind? Looks like they want to sell the land before the end of the year and redevelop within 5-7 years. I would assume downtown would be me attractive just being in a more dense area and more centrally located to the region…. https://www.crainscleveland.com/real-estate/avison-young-marketing-43-acre-site-avon-lake-redevelopment

Here are the options: Keep the stadium where it is and execute a lakefront plan that is done, has a price tag and is a big improvement of what we have now. Move it to Brook Park, paying vastly more public funds to do so. Revise the lakefront plan and hope there are resources left over to do anything with it. Sounds great but that is a massive, difficult assignment. It's like starting with a kitchen renovation and then deciding to knock your whole house down and start over. Edit: If Jimmy doesn't suck all the public money into Brook Park and there are realistic partners to help fill in the space he's leaving, then we're talking about a different thing. But all evidence points in the other direction. This to me is the definition of the phrase "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."