BROOK PARK, Ohio — Even as the Browns navigate turbulence over their plans to build a new stadium near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the city of Brook Park is preparing for big shifts on the ground – including the need for thousands of game-day parking spaces.
Haslam Sports Group’s latest plans for the 176-acre stadium district call for 12,000 parking spaces. Consultants working on the project say there will be a shortage of 10,000 parking spots on game days, according to a preliminary traffic and parking report obtained by News 5 through a public records request.
Those consultants suggest the solution is other people’s property. A section of their report highlights existing parking at businesses ranging from trucking companies and chain restaurants to the Adult Megastore and the Crazy Horse strip club on Brookpark Road.
News 5 called, emailed and visited dozens of property owners and businesses in the area over the last few weeks. Most of them declined on-camera interviews. Some business owners see an opportunity to make extra money by renting out their parking lots. Others are worried they’ll be pushed out as an industrial pocket of Brook Park changes.
“We’ve been here for 15 years, and our gate’s never been closed,” said Jack Holmes, vice president of operations at Global Transport, a logistics company on West 164th Street. “We might start closing it on Sundays.”
Along with Brookpark Road and Engle Road, West 164th Street sits in the city’s target zone for event parking, based on documents filed with the Ohio Department of Transportation.
Mayor Edward Orcutt says he wants parking and pedestrian traffic to go northeast of the proposed stadium site – staying clear of airport parking lots and residential streets.
“That’s what’s most important to me, as the mayor, is not having our neighborhoods affected by this,” Orcutt said in a wide-ranging interview earlier this summer.
He said the city is looking at amending its zoning code for industrial districts and the Brookpark Road corridor to allow what he described as entertainment parking.
“We’re having discussions with lots of business owners,” he said.
Today, the area is largely industrial, filled with truck yards, manufacturers, a union hall and a concrete plant. The future stadium site was occupied by automotive plants for decades, and there’s still a Ford Motor Co. engine plant immediately north of the property.
On Brookpark Road, there are vacant lots. There’s a church. The former Temptations strip club is wrapped in Tyvek. Down the street, the Cap’n Taco restaurant recently closed.
“Huge changes to the area. Good and bad,” Holmes said of what he expects.
Global Transport moved to Brook Park from Cleveland 15 years ago.
The location, near major freeways, is ideal for a company that moves stuff around. Global Transport has multiple buildings, housing several interconnected businesses, and enough room outside for 36 trucks and 64 trailers.
“People are gonna park here,” Holmes said of West 164th, “because they’re gonna be looking anywhere they can park. It’s just how it happens downtown.”
He’s worried about potential conflicts between entertainment and industry. Global Transport’s drivers often pick up their loads on Saturdays and Sundays.
“If a truck driver’s coming in or leaving and there’s cars everywhere … one, they wouldn’t be happy about it,” he said. “But two, if they accidentally hit somebody, it would be a big problem.”
Orcutt said the city is planning significant safety upgrades. That includes improving, adding and widening sidewalks and cutting a pedestrian path between West 164th Street and the stadium site. It’s unclear how much those improvements will cost
Separately, the city has applied for $70.3 million from ODOT’s Transportation Review Advisory Council to pay for road work, plus a pedestrian bridge over Engle Road.
“We are going to invest in our community to be able to make sure that this thing looks right,” Orcutt said. “It has to be right for us to be successful here. Last thing we want to do is buy a brand-new sports vehicle and put an 8-track system in it.”
Staff members at the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, a metropolitan planning organization better known as NOACA, say off-site parking is still a big question for the project. They want to see a detailed study of where people will park on event days and how many visitors will be driving, taking public transportation or using ridesharing services.
Orcutt and Dennis Albrecht, the director of transportation at Osborn Engineering, presented to a series of NOACA advisory councils on Friday. Osborn is a consultant for the Browns and was part of the team that produced the preliminary parking and traffic report last year.
Albrecht said a broader feasibility study, looking at traffic and other issues, should be completed by mid-September and submitted to the Ohio Department of Transportation.
And he said the Browns are pitching the idea of a Rapid train station just west of the stadium site to the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. Conceptual renderings of the station show that it would sit between State Route 237 and railroad tracks. Passengers would take a pedestrian bridge over the tracks to get to the stadium property.
Mike Schipper, RTA’s deputy general manager of engineering and project management, said he was “kind of surprised” to see the concept formally presented.
“Yes, we have had discussions regarding a station as described,” he said during a meeting of NOACA’s safety and operations advisory council. “But we (have) been very, very, very clear – there is not one dime of RTA money going to whatever that rendering is.”
He pointed out that there’s already a Rapid station on Brookpark Road.
“Our official position at RTA is that the distance from the Brookpark station to the football site is 3,000 feet, and it is comparable to the walking distance from Tower City to the existing stadium. … If someone wants to explore something else and we’re not paying anything for it, we are collaborating in that. But it is not gonna be an RTA project. And we’re not putting any money in it.”
Regardless of what happens with public transit, Holmes believes a new stadium and entertainment district will need way more than 10,000 off-site parking spaces.
“I would imagine people are gonna take advantage of the situation and try to buy as much open lots as possible and charge people … $35 per car to park,” he said.
He’s watching the landscape change – and wondering about the future.
“Brook Park has done a good job of staying under the radar until right now,” he said, laughing. “So, we’ll see.”
