Deadline Looms for Browns to Compete for Lakefront Site

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While it may be unlikely the existing Huntington Bank Field will remain standing if and when the Cleveland Browns leave it, the head of a nonprofit corporation overseeing lakefront development kept the door open for the National Football League team to return if it chooses. But the clock is running for the Browns’ owners to compete with other prospective lakefront developers to respond to a request for qualifications (RFQ) issued last month.

Scott Skinner, executive director of the North Coast Waterfront Development Corp. (NCWDC), outlined the possibilities of that RFQ yesterday at the Cleveland Planning Commission’s regular meeting. In short, if a new user or users are selected before November for the lakefront who have no use for the stadium, that would be the final nail in the coffin not only for keeping the Browns but for keeping the stadium, too.

“We plan to announce who we’ll be selecting by the end of the year with the idea that in Q1 (first quarter of 2026) we can hit the ground running with the next version of this (site),” Skinner said.

He said NCWDC and the city are open to any and all uses on the 50-acre Lake Erie waterfront site in the RFQ, be it hospitality, hotel, corporate office, retail, entertainment, recreation, sports, cultural amenities, public space or a mix. A respondent can express interest in some or all of the 50-acre development site.

“We really are trying to cast as wide a net as possible,” Skinner said. “We even leave it open if there are creative reuses of the stadium, we’re interested in hearing those proposals however likely or unlikely they may be.”

“Although the Browns have made their intentions clear as to what they prefer to do, if they do decide to come back and up on the lakefront, we have an existing 25-acre masterplan (for renovating the stadium) and would work with them,” he added.

“We believe in Cleveland,” said Dee Haslam who owns Haslam Sports Group (HSG) with her husband Jimmy Haslam. HSG in turn owns the Browns. They are cobbling together public funding for the construction of a $2.4 billion stadium in suburban Brook Park and $1.2 billion worth of stadium-area development. And they said yesterday they don’t intend on giving up on that.

“We believe in a growth mindset, we believe in economic development, and we believe that this could be one of the greatest communities out there,” she added. “But you have to have that vision and you have to have that growth mindset. And we believe that we can take care of our fans and provide economic development by doing the Brook Park project.”

“I think now is the time for this community to really work together to create a tremendous situation in Brook Park, as well as on the riverfront, a re-envisioned lakefront and potentially an almost-new airport,” said Jimmy Haslam. “So, lots of exciting things here in Cleveland and we’re happy to be part of it.”

“If there ultimately is no stadium on the site, we want to start the planning of uses, street grids, public spaces and all of that immediately,” Skinner said. “All that work takes a long time. While the current Browns lease extends through the 2028 season, four to five years in the development timeline is not a crazy amount of time.”

The potential reuses of an NFL-sized stadium are limited. Cleveland Soccer Group, which is working toward bringing men’s and women’s professional soccer to Cleveland, told NEOtrans they looked at but were not interested in redeveloping the lakefront stadium into a soccer-scale facility.

A typical Major League Soccer facility is roughly half as small as an NFL stadium. And the game attendance at MLS-Next Pro and Women’s Pro Soccer League games, which is what Cleveland has been awarded, would be much smaller. Instead, a 10,000-seat soccer stadium is planned in the South Gateway area south of downtown.

So if the stadium is demolished, Skinner said the community will go through another planning process of what will ultimately go there — similar to the one that mapped out a masterplan for 43.5 acres of land north and east of the stadium — including a proposed land bridge from downtown over the railroad tracks and Shoreway boulevard.

“The goal of this RFQ is to bring in development partners that share in our vision and share in the values of our lakefront master-planning community engagement work,” Skinner said.

He said he and city officials spent the past year talking to local, regional and national developers to get input on what would make this site and and RFQ for it more attractive.

“One of the things that every developer we spoke to said is your site is not connected to anything from a vehicular perspective and from a pedestrian perspective,” Skinner added. He said developers told him: “It’s really difficult to get there.”

The first phase of the North Coast Connector, which includes the pedestrian land bridge and conversion of the Shoreway into a boulevard between West 6th to roughly East 12th streets, is fully funded at $284 million. It will turn that highway from what city officials call a barrier into a lakefront connector with intersections at East 9th Street, Erieside Avenue and West 3rd Street.

Construction on the first phase of the North Coast Connector is due to start in 2027 and be completed in 2030. Additional work to rebuild lakefront bulkheads, utility extensions a new street grid and sidewalks on the 50-acre lakefront redevelopment site will be pursued once the RFQ is completed.

“To make this an enticing site, we need to think about the connectivity,” Skinner said. That will also include the multimodal transportation center uniting Amtrak trains plus Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority buses and trains in a single station facility. “The multimodal site will have its own RFQ” after a masterplan design work is done, he said.

As an interim step, the city, NCWDC and Downtown Cleveland Inc. created the 1-acre North Coast Yard temporary pop-up park on the waterfront next to the Steamship William G. Mather Museum that will offer a variety of events and programming into early September. Prospect developers were shown the North Coast Yard and how popular it is, especially on Friday nights.

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