After months of conspicuous silence, the Greater Cleveland Partnership has finally taken a position in the Browns stadium debate – and the hosts of the Today in Ohio podcast aren’t buying their explanation for the delay.
In Wednesday’s episode, podcast hosts Chris Quinn and Courtney Astolfi dissected GCP’s sudden endorsement of the Brook Park stadium plan, questioning both the timing and the organization’s claims of extensive research.
“GCP has finally chosen their side here and they’re with the Browns and the state, and they’re endorsing the plan for a new covered stadium in Brook park over downtown,” Astolfi said. “Now, oddly enough, GCP, in its letter announcing this, still described a covered stadium downtown as the ideal scenario here.”
This contradiction – endorsing Brook Park while simultaneously calling downtown the “ideal” location – raised flags for the podcast hosts, who have been covering the stadium saga extensively. The timing also struck them as suspicious.
“I’m not buying any of that,” Chris Quinn responded bluntly. “They’ve spent months saying it’s not our place to weigh in, which was always ridiculous.”
What makes the sudden shift noteworthy is GCP’s claim that their position follows “months of study” – a justification that the podcast hosts found unconvincing. As Chris Quinn put it, “To say we spent months of study studying what? I mean, it’s not like this is rocket science.”
The podcast discussion explored two possible explanations for GCP’s timing. One theory is that the business community’s frustration with GCP’s neutrality had reached a breaking point, with many comparing the current leadership unfavorably to former GCP head Joe Roman, who would have taken a stand much earlier in the process.
The second theory points to pressure from Republican lawmakers in Columbus, who may have sent signals to Northeast Ohio’s business community to present a unified front as they prepared to authorize $600 million in state funding for the project.
What’s striking about GCP’s endorsement is how closely it mirrors the Browns’ existing talking points, especially regarding the dubious claims about additional events a covered stadium might attract. As Astolfi noted, “Hopping in at this late hour, echoing a lot of the same talking points the Browns have been talking about for months just feels kind of extraordinarily anticlimactic.”
The one area where GCP did break new ground was in suggesting the Browns contribute more to Cleveland than previously discussed. “GCP endorsed kind of the idea of the Browns finding a way to spend more than $150 million to Cleveland to help develop the waterfront,” Courtney Astolfi explained – a figure higher than what the team had floated.
This development reveals the complex interplay of business interests, political pressure, and public skepticism that often surrounds major infrastructure projects. The podcast hosts suggested that rather than claiming months of intensive research, GCP should have simply acknowledged the political realities: with state funding now on the table, Northeast Ohio needs to present a unified front.
Listen to the episode here.
Note: Artificial intelligence was used to help generate this story from Today in Ohio, a news podcast discussion by cleveland.com editors. Visitors to cleveland.com have asked for more text stories based on website podcast discussions.
Listen to full “Today in Ohio” episodes where Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with Editorial Board member Lisa Garvin, Impact Editor Leila Atassi and Content Director Laura Johnston.