Friday, August 20, 1999
Stadium symbolic for Browns
Gone are days of the 'mistake by the lake'
The Associated Press
CLEVELAND — Standing on the same lakefront plot as its predecessor, the new Cleveland Browns Stadium is more than a $282 million Sunday playground for pro football.
To Cleveland, it's a symbol of the city's fight to right a wrong, to bring back its beloved Browns.
Built with more than $200 million in taxpayer money, the new stadium is an arresting glass-and-steel structure that will hold 72,000 fans and now needs only some memories to make it feel like home to the Browns and their fans.
“Look around here,” former Cleveland quarterback Bernie Kosar said earlier this week as the Browns went through a dress rehearsal in their new home. “Could this place be any nicer?”
Hardly.
The new stadium, designed by HOK Sports of Kansas City, has it all. Among the amenities: 148 luxury suites, the NFL's largest state-of-the-art scoreboard, a 450,000-watt audio system, an 11,000-square foot home locker room, landscaped grounds, and some of the closest seats to the field in the NFL.
And of course, a Dawg Pound. Cleveland's notorious bleacher section of barking fans, who are known to hoist a few beers and hurl dog bones onto the field, have a remodeled home.
If fans like what they see, they have themselves to thank.
A day after former Browns owner Art Modell announced he was moving the old franchise to Baltimore in 1995, local voters approved a tax on alcohol and tobacco products that paid for a large chunk of the new stadium and showed the NFL that Cleveland wanted its team back.
“The stadium engulfs you,” quarterback Ty Detmer said after the team went through its dry run to prepare for Saturday's opener against the Minnesota Vikings. “The stands are right on the field. It's like Lambeau Field.”
But it's nothing like the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium, or as it came to be known: “The Mistake on the Lake.”
That cavernous ballpark — built in 1932, closed in 1995 and torn down a year later — was, depending on whom you talk to, either a sports shrine or the worst stadium ever built. Players disliked the small locker rooms, but the stadium itself was always full — or close to it.
“You kind of felt like you were taking a trip through time,” said linebacker Chris Spielman, who grew up rooting for the Browns and played his first pro game in the old stadium. “It was a very special place.”
Depending on seat location, fans in the old stadium sometimes had to crane their necks around giant poles in order to see the action. That won't be a problem in the new place, which boasts a great view from the first row to the far reaches of the upper deck.
“Look at this view, you can see everything,” said Susan Daley, who with her husband, Danny Douglass, came along with 25,000 fans for a sneak preview as the Browns practiced in their new home earlier this week.
When the new stadium officially opens Saturday night, Browns fans will finally be able to put three years without pro football behind them.
“I remember how sad I was when they tore the old stadium down,” Daley said, looking down from her upper deck seat on the 40-yard line. “I don't care now.”
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