The new NFL league year and free agency are well underway, but let’s rewind to a hot topic before free agency, the Cleveland Browns, and their new stadium. News broke on February, 8th, 2024 by neotrans.blog that the Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam were filling to purchase a plot of land near the Cleveland Hopkins airport, a vastly boring area to put what should be one of a city’s highlights. This news caused an uproar in discussions of what the Cleveland Browns should do next in terms of their home stadium and with it, should the Browns move in the direction the league seems to be heading, adding a roof to a traditionally non-roofed football team.

The Browns’ current stadium, Cleveland Browns Stadium, is located on the lakefront area of downtown Cleveland. This stadium was built for the 1999 season to coincide with the Browns’ return to the NFL after disgraced owner Art Model moved the team to Baltimore in 1996. This stadium has needed major reservations for years and with its poor parking space, having to walk from Cleveland’s municipal lot to the stadium, can be as long as roughly a mile depending on where you are parked.  furthermore, the temperatures at this location, with the wind chill off of the lake, can be brutal come November and onward in the NFL season. A move of location is more likely than not.

While this background information is useful, the question still lingers: what is the solution? I sure hope the land in Brook Park, next to the airport is not the final solution. As previously mentioned, there is nothing developed in terms of leisure, not to say there can’t be more added, but being 15 to 20 minutes from downtown doesn’t feel right for a team that is so synonymous with the downtown area it is named after. I speak for what I hope is all Browns fans when I say there is nothing like downtown Cleveland on a Browns game day and it would be so unfortunate to lose that.

The current location of Browns stadium, to me, doesn’t make sense. It appears that tearing down the current location and rebuilding over the same plot of land would be necessary, requiring the Browns to find an alternative venue for a few years. Solutions for the need to move mention locations such as Ohio Stadium in Columbus or the Hall of Fame stadium in Canton which again, defeat the “Browns should be downtown” ideal. If neither the current land nor Brook Park are viable options, where else could be considered?

After breaking the news of the Haslams buying the plot of land in Brook Park, neotrans.blog released an article giving a proposed solution for all the issues mentioned above. The US Postal Service building past Progressive Field on Orange Avenue off of Ontario Street has been a point of interest for the Haslams for years. This area has enough land not just for a stadium, but ample parking, space to create new developments such as restaurants, bars, practice facilities, and even a soccer stadium as mentioned by neotrans.blog. This project would move the USPS office to the location the Haslams purchased, which makes sense for a business like the USPS as there are other distribution buildings such as Amazon in the area and that gives the Haslams a large area on the Northeast side of the city to build their Stadium, developments and honestly whatever else they please, effectively lengthening the downtown area.

So, the final question remains: should this new stadium have a dome? my answer to this is obviously yes. I know the Browns are a traditional football team that has always played in the main different elements of northeast Ohio, However, I do not think the weather is as important to this team as the fanbase thinks. To illustrate this point, consider the Christmas Eve game in 2022 against the New Orleans Saints. The Browns lost that game to a warm weather, domed stadium team even though the weather was below freezing to the point fans in the nose bleeds were allowed to move to the lower bowl for their safety due to the wind chill. As much as we want to think so, the weather is not an advantage for the Browns. If we are to go with this new development idea north of Progressive Field, let’s go all in. Put a dome on the new stadium so that it can host events like Wrestlemania, Final Fours, college conference championships, and major concerts year-round, not just in the summer. It is an exciting time to be a Browns fan and a new stadium can and should be a huge part of that excitement.