Brook Park planning commission approves modified Browns stadium parking plan

BROOK PARK, Ohio — A special planning commission took place in Brook Park Thursday night about parking for the new domed stadium.

For over a year, the city and the Haslam Sports Group (HSG) have been at odds over parking — 13,000 versus 8,000 spaces.

After back-and-forth and requests for more clarification on the parking and transportation plan on Thursday night, the Brook Park Planning Commission voted to move forward with those reduced spots.

City required 13,000 spaces

The city’s planning commission told them 13,000.

HSG says that would wipe out 60% of the space planned for mixed-use — offices, housing and shopping.

Eric Yarberry, with Lincoln Property Co., said “the challenge here is that 13,000 spaces on site would eliminate a substantial portion of the mixed-use development you saw in March. And so, a strategy that combines on-site and off-site parking gives us a way to preserve more of the development potential while also distributing event day traffic across a broader network of access points.”

Yarberry said there are three important principles that they wanted to convey at the meeting with their PowerPoint.

“First is that concentrating parking concentrates traffic, whereas a network of on-site and off-site can spread out arrivals, spread departures, and help with massive egress of people leaving a major event. That reduces the burden on any single intersection. Secondly, traffic performance depends on how we manage the event. It’s not purely a parking stall conversation. So clear signage, lane controls, smart traffic systems, they all help to manage how vehicles move through the area. And thirdly, operations can adapt from event to event. Even with a dome stadium that can host dozens and dozens of events per year, the peak parking demand is relatively small number of days.

Traffic study cited

Dennis Albrecht of Osborn Engineering says the math works — on-site plus off-site covers game day, with some fans shifting to RTA and ride-share.

“If you look at the event day parking column, 10,377 spaces off-site along with 10,500 on-site has almost 21,000 total parking spaces,” Albrecht said. “The total estimated need from our feasibility study for parking spaces is right around 20,000. So, we anticipate that there will be enough parking.”

He said they also anticipate a mode shift, with people shifting more toward mass transit or ride-share once they see congested parking or slower traffic conditions.

Albrecht said they’ve worked closely with NOACA (Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency), which has performed independent reviews of all traffic studies. He said they’ve conducted about 10 traffic studies for event-day and non-event-day traffic at specific intersections and interchanges.

“With all of those studies, we’ve determined, guess what? There’s going to be congestion,” Albrecht said. “When you have a major event, look at any event that happens, even just a play at Playhouse Square. There’s congestion around the event that will happen.”

But he said you can’t build roads for the worst day — spreading lots eases it.

“We can’t build roads for the worst-case scenario. Just like churches are not designed for Easter Sunday,” Albrecht said. “We have to design for an average condition, a normal everyday condition and so that’s the way we’re designing these roads to handle that normal everyday condition.”

He said NOACA put it into their regional traffic model and determined spreading parking across the city, rather than containing all 13,000 spots at one site, also reduces traffic congestion.

Commissioners raise safety concerns

Commissioners pushed back, especially on where those off-site spots are and how fans get to the stadium safely.

One Commissioner raised concerns about 5,400 spots at the IX Center.

“I’ve heard there’s 5,400 spots there, an average of three people per car, but 16,200 people that need to get from the IX Center to the stadium and my concern is right now there’s not walkways, safe walkways to get all of those pedestrians. I know they talked about shuttles, but you can’t shuttle 16,200 people in a reasonable amount of time, which tells me 80% of them are probably going to walk,” he said.

As for the IX Center concern, the city says it’s off the table for now.

Mayor Edward Orcutt said “This is on page 21 identifying 22,839 parking stalls that are within that area. But we are not including the IX Center because of safety issues. We don’t even want to make that a part of it right now.”

He said the city cannot provide concrete numbers or contracts because it is not zoned for entertainment parking right now.

Mayor: Project about regional revenue, not just parking

The mayor also says this is bigger than parking, it’s about money for the whole region.

Mayor Edward Orcutt said “I guarantee, mark my words, I’m going to say it in the camera here. 2029, we’re going to have complainers on social media saying, ‘what did Mayor Orcutt do to our town? We have congestion.’ What we’re doing is we’re generating revenue and commerce for the region, and we’re building the best NFL stadium in the NFL with the best mixed-use. The other important thing that needs to be noted here is that the mixed-use and the full build out needs to be a part of this project so it becomes the world-class attraction so that we can actually generate sales tax for the state and for the county, generate the income tax.”

Now that it’s passed the planning commission, it heads to full city council for final approval.