New Browns owner will likely make many changes once he takes over, but he’s thinking about one that would change the fundamental Cleveland experience.
Haslam told members of the Cleveland City Council that he’ll explore the possibility of adding a retractable roof to Cleveland Browns Stadium.
“One of the first acts that we’ll do and I’ve said this several times, assuming we’re approved [as owner], is to bring in, I think there’s three nationally known stadium architects — and you’d be crazy not to talk to all three of them — and get their ideas about the stadium,” Haslam said, via the Akron Beacon Journal. “We are completely open-minded, and we want to provide really two things: one, a great experience for our fans at a Browns game; the other thing, secondly — and I assume this is what everybody in this room is interested in — we want to use that facility as much as we possibly can, want to use it more than we can now.
“So anything that helps us do that, I’m certainly not at all saying we’re gonna do that, but we’ll certainly take a look at it.”
That sounds like a thinly veiled request for a Super Bowl as well as getting in out of the snow and wind, and since it’s been pulled off in other cold-weather venues, it’s not impossible.
But it just seems counter-intuitive.
Cleveland in December can a brutal place, though I’m told some people find it charming.
Browns coach Pat Shurmur is apparently one of them.
“I like the setting that we present on game day here,” Shurmur said. “I’m not really trying to visualize anything different at this point. … I think some of the charm of, at least of what I’ve experienced so far here in Cleveland, is kind of the late-season, wintry setting.”
The idea of indoor football in Cleveland (or even sheltered-from-the-elements) may never seem natural, however, no matter how many events they could bring there.