{"id":169319,"date":"2025-07-14T04:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T04:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/169319\/"},"modified":"2025-07-14T04:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T04:18:11","slug":"cleveland-takes-sides-between-owners-of-the-cavs-and-browns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/169319\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleveland takes sides between owners of the Cavs and Browns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not all billionaires are created equal in the eyes of Cleveland\u2019s leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For months, Justin Bibb and Chris Ronayne have wrestled with the Haslams, who own the Browns, over their plans for a roofed stadium in Brook Park. But Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cavaliers and patriarch of the Bedrock and Rocket family of companies? Now there\u2019s a billionaire team owner they can get behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cleveland officials lauded Gilbert in absentia last week at a topping-off ceremony for the Cavs\u2019 new practice facility. Dubbed the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center, the building is going up along the Cuyahoga River, where Bedrock has plans for other major developments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Location was important for speakers at the event, including City Council President Blaine Griffin, who wants the Browns<\/a> to renovate the lakefront stadium rather than move to Brook Park.<\/p>\n

\u201cDan Gilbert and the Rocket Mortgage team and the Cleveland Clinic put their money where their mouth is, and that\u2019s in the city of Cleveland, in the heart of Cleveland,\u201d Griffin said.<\/p>\n

\"Signal<\/p>\n

Observers noted the contrast between the warmth for Gilbert\u2019s downtown investments and the coolness for the Haslams\u2019 Brook Park plans<\/a>. Calling Gilbert \u201cCleveland leaders\u2019 favorite billionaire,\u201d Axios\u2019 Sam Allard wrote<\/a> that officials \u201chave a billionaire they feel they can worship in good conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cleveland\u2019s love language isn\u2019t just words of affirmation. It\u2019s also economic development incentives, including tax increment financing to boost Bedrock\u2019s riverfront plans.<\/p>\n

Real estate writer Ken Prendergast found what he called a \u201cbattle of the billionaires<\/a>\u201d in Bedrock\u2019s landing of Cosm<\/a>, the immersive entertainment complex, in one of its downtown projects. Look closely at one of the Browns\u2019 Brook Park stadium renderings<\/a>. Prendergast noted that Cosm had been included in the background.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To that observation Weekly Chatter will add one more. Another rendering of the Brook Park stadium<\/a> showed the indoor football field converted into \u2014 of all things \u2014 a basketball court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Time out for Cleveland\u2019s payments for Browns stadium<\/p>\n

We told you last month that Cleveland City Hall was queuing up $2.6 million<\/a> to reimburse the Browns for repairs at the lakefront Huntington Bank Field.\u00a0<\/p>\n

City Council introduced legislation in June to pay the bill. Typically, such a routine measure would have been passed at the following meeting in July. But the Browns legislation didn\u2019t come up for a vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for City Hall said the Browns themselves asked for the delay.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not all billionaires are created equal in the eyes of Cleveland\u2019s leaders.\u00a0 For months, Justin Bibb and Chris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3772],"tags":[7,306,31354,305,4132,193,31355,3846,31356,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-169319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-cavaliers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cavaliers","10":"tag-chris-ronayne","11":"tag-cleveland","12":"tag-cleveland-browns","13":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","14":"tag-cleveland-mayor-justin-bibb","15":"tag-clevelandcavaliers","16":"tag-council-president-blaine-griffin","17":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114849664532723736","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}