Brook Park is about 14 miles from Cleveland.

The owners of the National Football League’s Cleveland Browns franchise, Jimmy and Dee Haslam, have decided that they want to build a domed stadium in Brook Park, Ohio which is about 14 miles southwest of Cleveland. Just because the Haslams want to build a stadium in Brook Park, that does not necessarily mean the Haslams’ football team will ever play in the facility. There is a small matter of how the building will be financed. The Haslams claim they will put up money for the venue but taxpayers’ dollars will also be needed to construct the stadium and buildings that would ring the property. Can the Haslams get state and local taxpayers’ dollars for the stadium-village?

That is going to be a major obstacle because Brook Park has only around 18,000 residents so the municipality cannot put up very much money although it can use mechanisms such as hiking property taxes and provide the Haslams with a number of options from waiving local property taxes or create a tax district within the stadium property that would take taxes collected from businesses inside the property and allow the Haslams to keep the money to pay off the stadium-village debt. The city of Cleveland was offering the Haslams $500 million worth of renovations at the stadium that presently houses the Haslam’s business if they agreed to stay in town. Getting public money is going to be a problem. Ohio state elected officials have to decide if they want to fund the Haslams’ project and then if they do, how does that impact Cincinnati where the owners of the National Football League’s Bengals want public money to renovate the city’s football stadium. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb isn’t giving up and is ready to sit down with the Haslams should the Brook Park project not get public money. The Cleveland stadium game continues.

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Cleveland Browns stadium