CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Browns see their future 12 miles away from the city’s lakefront. But they’ll keep their seat at the table when it comes to shaping the Downtown shoreline – for now, at least.
Mayor Justin Bibb and City Council President Blaine Griffin punted Monday on their push to have a top Browns executive kicked off a key nonprofit board.
At the last minute, a special meeting of the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation’s board was pushed back. It’s unclear if or when it will be rescheduled.
“The mayor and I thought it was best to postpone this meeting and this conversation and really give the Haslam Sports Group an opportunity to see how we can continue to be partners within the lakefront development,” Griffin said during an interview at City Hall.
A spokesman for the mayor confirmed the decision, saying it would give the board and attorneys more time to review the matter.
The board was set to vote on ousting Dave Jenkins, Haslam Sports Group’s chief operating officer, in the wake of a heated exchange between Cleveland and the Browns.
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Bibb called for the board meeting last week after lawyers for the Browns denigrated the city’s lakefront development efforts in a court filing.
The city and the team are sparring over the future of Huntington Bank Field as the Browns look to leave their existing stadium Downtown for a new sports and entertainment district in Brook Park.
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“Haslam Sports Group released statements displaying their lack of commitment to lakefront development and stating that there is ‘no actionable plan,’” the mayor wrote in an email to North Coast nonprofit board members last week.
In light of that, Bibb wrote, it wasn’t appropriate for Jenkins to remain on the board.
Griffin agreed with the original decision to call a meeting. But he sees value in taking a timeout in hopes of smoothing things over.
“It’s only the right thing to do,” he said, describing the Browns as a critical corporate partner that the city will need to work with – regardless of what happens with the stadium.
“Just because we may disagree doesn’t mean we have to be disagreeable,” he said.
The city launched the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation in 2023 to speed up a makeover of the Downtown lakefront. The nonprofit got fully up and running last year under executive director Scott Skinner, a former vice president of development for the NRP Group, a major apartment developer based in Cleveland.
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The organization is devoted full-time to making the city’s lakefront plans a reality through fundraising, advocacy and partnerships. The nonprofit was set up to transcend administrations and take the day-to-day work on the waterfront out of City Hall.
But the corporation’s bylaws show it isn’t buffered from political whims.
Bibb and Griffin sit on the board and appoint five of the board members, giving city officials control over a majority of the seats. The board can range from 10 to 13 members, and, at the outset, at least one of them had to be nominated by the owners of the Browns.
To remove a board member, two-thirds of the directors have to agree.
“I won’t get into the internal details … but the partners that I serve with on this board wanted to have a more in-depth conversation,” Griffin said Monday.
David Gilbert, the North Coast board’s chairman, leads Destination Cleveland, the convention and visitors’ bureau. He’s also the president and CEO of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission – where Jenkins is a member of the board and the executive committee.
Greg Harris, the CEO of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, is also a North Coast board member. Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam have donated millions of dollars to the Rock Hall for education programs. And Dee Haslam has a seat on the Rock Hall’s board.
The other North Coast Waterfront Development Corp. board members are:
- Vice President Ayonna Blue Donald, who leads affordable housing work across Ohio for Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit organization.
- Secretary Kirsten Ellenbogen, president and CEO of the Great Lakes Science Center.
- Treasurer Michael Taylor, a retired senior executive from PNC Bank.
- Pat Rios, the Cleveland Clinic’s executive director of buildings and design.
- Terri Hamilton Brown, the executive director of the St. Clair Superior Development Corp., a nonprofit neighborhood group on the city’s East Side.
- Mitchell Schneider, founder and executive chairman of First Interstate Properties, a real estate development and management company based in Lyndhurst.
“Cleveland’s a big city, but it’s a small town,” Griffin said. “So all of us know each other. All of us have intimate relationships.”
The nonprofit has worked with the city to secure $150 million in federal and state grants for major lakefront infrastructure projects, which are part of an ambitious vision for making the land around the Rock Hall, Science Center and stadium easier to reach.
Construction on those projects, including a reimagined Shoreway and a land bridge that will link the grassy Downtown Malls to the waterfront, is scheduled to start in 2027.
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Meanwhile, the Browns' lease on the city-owned stadium is set to end in early 2029. The team is seeking $1.2 billion in taxpayer financing for the Brook Park proposal. Construction needs to start early next year if the Browns want to move by the start of the 2029 season.
Griffin said he still hopes to persuade the Browns to stay put.
“This community has invested a tremendous amount of money and, quite frankly, blood, sweat and tears for this team on the lakefront,” he said. “I look at it as a marriage. Hopefully we’ll have a partnership that can last for another 30 years. … And if we do have to separate, we want to make sure that everybody’s made whole.”
