First of all, I regret having spoken kindly of certain stadiums I liked in my previous blog on stadiums. I know, who cares what I like, but it is my blog so I get to make the call. And I called it wrong a couple of times, like the Baylor University football facility and one other that I don’t really remember.
But a lot of my interest now is what the Cleveland Browns are attempting to do to expand their footprint within the NFL and to attract at least one Super Bowl in the future (full disclosure, I ride and die with the Cleveland Browns.) Jimmy and Dee Haslam, who head the current Browns ownership group, were major owners of the Pilot Flying J Travel Center truck stops before purchasing the Browns 20 or so years ago. The current stadium, Huntington Bank Field, which I wrote about in the previous blog referred to above, is situated in downtown Cleveland and adjacent to Lake Erie. It’s a great spot and is shown below.
The current stadium is in the same spot where the previous home of the Browns, Cleveland Municipal Stadium, was located and is the stadium I attended with my dad and uncle when I was a kid. It was constructed in 1931, but the Browns were not founded until 1947 as a part of the All America League. They joined the NFL later in the 1950s.
An aerial view of Municipal Stadium along with a couple of shots of the 1945 NFL championship game played by the previous Cleveland professional football team, the Rams, are shown below. That was the last game the Rams played before moving to Los Angeles.
The existing Huntington Bank Field, designed by Populous Architects is shown below:
The plan is to construct a new stadium away from the lake and near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport (map below). The proposal by Haslam Sports Group is to be the centerpiece of a new commercial and office development in Brook Park, 15 miles from the downtown lakefront, quite a distance from the downtown area of Cleveland. While I do not think this move is a great idea, it seems to be a great idea to Jimmy Haslam.
The stadium architecture is composed of a new “domed” (their words, not mine, there is no dome) multipurpose enclosed sports facility designed by HKS Architects. The location is nothing like the existing urban location nor does it possess any historical significance as does the preceding lakefront stadium location. Brook Park: no lake, no bars and restaurants or hotels, at least in the short run. I am not sure that Jimmy, who lives in Tennessee, understands the significance of the current location at the lake to the people (me) who have followed the Browns most of their lives.
But anyway, the new stadium was announced earlier this year with considerable fanfare along with the cool renderings shown below. The announcement included the mention of how this is going to be a magnet for concerts, conventions, and a community gathering space for people of the region. However, its imagery is more like that of a Sears store at the mall (don’t get me wrong, I like me some mall’s Dick’s Sporting Goods). No one, however, is talking about what this thing looks like. Good grief, it’s as if Chip and Joanna Gaines had a hand in it. It makes one wonder if the architects were directed in such a way as to achieve this type of imagery:
(Side note: There was a consideration to “dome” the existing stadium but rejected.)
Turning the new Browns stadium into the centerpiece of just another suburban office park is not what I would want to attend with my dad, who if he were alive would not be cool with that at all. Other cities in this Northern Division of the AFC that the Browns belong to have their stadiums, nice outdoor stadiums, right in the middle of the downtown waterfront: Pittsburgh and Cincinnati especially. And Cleveland too presently. Until now. This is my small complaint though. Little of it is anything that Jimmy would read or care about, but I think I will get it off my chest. (Along with how on earth Jimmy spent a quarter of a billion dollars on a quarterback that is not going to work out.) And to talk a little of what is on my mind this month, for my stadium comments in Cleveland Ohio that is.
Article Written by David Tritt, Senior Architect.
