It didn’t take long for Crew owners Jimmy, Dee Haslam and Pete Edwards to realize they may have underestimated fan support when they built Lower.com Field in the Arena District.
“We didn’t build it big enough,” De Haslam said Tuesday. “We learned that very quickly because we have a huge fan base.”
The approximately 3-year-old stadium has a seating capacity of 20,139. Last Saturday’s regular season match against Montreal, which ended in a 0-0 draw, attracted a record 20,927 fans, which is even more than the attendance at last season’s Major League Soccer Cup final on December 9.
“It’s viewed as the best stadium in the NFL,” said Haslam, who interviewed Ohio Chamber President Steve Stivers at the Columbus Museum of Art for the chamber’s annual Business Case Summit.
She said the stadium brought attention to the city and became a model for other stadium designs, including Northwestern’s new football stadium. The stadium was also selected to host this year’s American League All-Star Game.
“The fans came out and made a huge difference in how our players felt about our stadium,” she said.
Cleveland Browns Stadium Dome?
The stadium context comes as the Haslam family continues preliminary work on a potential new stadium for the Cleveland Browns, which they purchased in 2012. The Haslams are also part-owners of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks.
“It’s incredibly complicated. There are a lot of details to work out,” she said.
Two ideas are being considered: a renovation of the current Cleveland Browns stadium along Lake Erie or a domed stadium in suburban Brook Park near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
“We have two great opportunities,” she said. We’re really excited. One of the things we care about is fan stuff. Now we’re not doing a great job with that.
She added that among the problems are parking and access to the stadium.
Haslam and her son-in-law, J.W. Johnson III, a Browns executive vice president, said the value of Dome Stadium is that it can be used for events other than Browns games such as hosting Big 10 championships, concerts and basketball games. And a partner of Haslam Sports Group.
The recent NCAA women’s Final Four in Cleveland attracted an estimated $30 million to the local economy, Johnson said.
“How you do that on a regular basis is very important,” he said.
Regardless of the choice made, Haslam said the lakefront should be redeveloped.
She recalled her first trip to Cleveland in 2012 when she asked someone about walking along the lake.
“He looked at me like I was crazy. ‘There’s no way to get to the lakefront,'” she said. He told her.
At that point she became passionate about the need to redevelop the lake.
“How can you have this wonderful city without having access to the lakefront,” she said.
No matter how the project goes, it will require the kind of public-private partnership that was necessary to build Lower.com Field, Johnson said.
“We have to have that public partnership to create these great stadiums,” he said.
“It’s not just about us, it’s about what’s best for the state. What’s best for the region and what’s best for the city of Cleveland,” Hassan said.
“This relationship is really important to us. We’re going to be here for a long time.”
Hassan and Johnson recognize the commitment such partnerships require from taxpayers.
“We go into the process to figure out how we can be good partners, not how we can win,” she said. “We also realize that taxpayers should get a return.” “It should be a good use of their dollars.”
mawilliams@dispatch.com
@BizMarkWilliams
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