If you want a dead zone on Cleveland’s lakefront, leave Browns Stadium right where it is: Brent LarkinAerial view of Cleveland Browns Stadium and downtown Cleveland.CLEVELAND -- Seventeen acres of perhaps the most valuable urban land in Ohio sits on the Lake Erie shoreline, just east of where that great lake intersects with the historic Cuyahoga River.
Undoing mistakes made in the aftermath of the Civil War is no easy task. But now, with the Browns lease on that stadium expiring in 2028 and Mayor Justin Bibb deep into the weeds of the city’s umpteenth lakefront development plan, community leaders are again wildly overvaluing the economic importance of where the Browns play meaningful football for less than 30 hours a year.
What’s needed here is a good-faith effort by the Browns, Bibb, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and their respective councils to build a new stadium away from the lakefront without digging deep into the pockets of hard-working Greater Clevelanders. Greater Cleveland has suffered from a glaring absence of visionaries since the death 22 years ago of Richard Shatten, the original head of thebusiness group established in the early 1980s. One of the region’s few widely respected voices on matters related to economic development belonged to Edward “Ned” Hill, a former dean of Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.
Taxpayers have invested far more in Cleveland’s Gateway project than they were originally told, but Hill convincingly argues Gateway was worthwhile because it revived a dying part of downtown, sparked a housing boom and helped made downtown a more welcoming place to visitors.