Meet Whitney and JW, the Future of the Browns: CLE Daily

🌤️ 86°; Very humid and thunderstorms possible

📸 Snap a Cemetery, Win $50: Medina's Friends of the Cemetery kicks off its 5th annual amateur photo contest today, inviting shots of Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum or Old Town Graveyard's landscapes, wildlife and architecture. Entries close Oct. 25; winners in three age groups take home Sweets & Geeks or Foundry Social gift cards.

🏚️ East Cleveland's Anchor Building Is Back on the Market: The Cuyahoga Land Bank has put the Mickey's building, centerpiece of the Circle East development, up for sale after a planned lab conversion with Verdynt Bio fell through at the end of 2025.

ICYMI: Remember when Cleveland's Planning Commission approved the design for Downtown's Canal Basin Park, the boardwalk-and-playground plan for the old canal terminus? A 2,500-square-foot, 15,000-pound public art installation just landed on the site, open for free through Sept. 13. 

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Trivia Question

This Cleveland militia saw action in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I, but it’s probably most notable now for the building that houses its headquarters.

Sports: The Haslams' next generation is building a $2.6 billion Browns stadium — and inheriting the family business.

By Dillon Stewart

James "JW" Johnson III and Whitney Haslam Johnson, the son-in-law and daughter of Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, are the driving forces behind Huntington Bank Field, the new domed stadium rising in Brook Park, funded by $600 million in state money, $245 million from Brook Park and $1.76 billion from Haslam Sports Group, and set to seat 67,500 to 75,000 fans.

A Design Rooted in Cleveland: Architect Lance Evans of HKS, who's built stadiums for the Rams, Vikings, Cowboys and Colts, drew the new stadium's domed roof from the atriums of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Rock Hall and the Old Arcade rather than replicating another city's design.

The Old Stadium Never Aged Well: Built hastily in 1996 for $247 million after Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore, the current lakefront stadium needs an estimated $117 million in repairs just to stay playable, with the city still paying $9.3 million a year on the original construction debt through 2028.

Family Business, Sports Edition: JW, a former sports media pro, and Whitney, who spent 18 years at the Haslams' Pilot truck stop company, joined the Browns full-time in 2018 and are now positioned to eventually lead Haslam Sports Group, which also owns MLS's Columbus Crew and the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks.

More Than Just Football: A separate $175 million, privately financed expansion of the Browns' Berea headquarters will add apartments, retail, a hotel and a 7,000-seat community stadium for public and high school use.

Worth Noting: Estimates of the new stadium's economic impact vary sharply — the Browns project 5,400 jobs and $1.2 billion in annual impact, while other analyses point to a loss of $30 million in Downtown economic output and hundreds of jobs.

Read the full story. 

Talk of the Town

SouthPark Mall in Strongsville is adding two new stores and refreshing three others. Lao Sze Chuan, an upscale Szechuan restaurant from celebrity chef Tony Hu, and Soar N' Bounce, a family trampoline park moving into the former Dick's Sporting Goods space, are both set to open this fall. Aerie, Aeropostale and Lucky Shoes have completed remodels or relocations.

Cleveland promised to "accelerate" home repairs. Some residents are still waiting two years later. Angelo Merendino won a spot in the city's 2024 ARPA-funded home repair lottery, one of 153 people selected, but his Old Brooklyn driveway and garage are still untouched. Competing repair lists left him and others stuck in line behind an earlier round of applicants, even as the city has spent just $2.3 million of the $10 million it set aside.

Rainbow Terrace is getting 44 new, larger apartments, a little more than a year after a deadly explosion. Cleveland's Planning Commission approved schematics for the rebuilt Garden Valley complex, with each unit sized up from the original and a single point of entry, plus a new community pavilion and sculpture garden. The June 2025 gas explosion killed one person and displaced more than 40 families.

Ohio's Bhutanese community is reeling from catastrophic floods half a world away. With the death toll nearing 600 and thousands still missing across Nepal and Tibet, Bhutanese immigrants in Cleveland, Akron and Columbus are struggling to reach family while the nonprofit Asian Services in Action organizes relief efforts and community conversations.

Legacy Village's Lee Hayden Gallery just earned a national honor. The American Art Awards named it Ohio's Best Art Gallery among its 20 Best Art Galleries in the USA for 2026, recognizing the 4,000-square-foot space's 70 represented artists from 20 countries, including Todd White, the former lead character designer for SpongeBob turned fine artist. 

Yesterday's Trivia Answer

What Henry Dreyfus-designed streamlined New York Central day train debuted in 1936 with an initial run between Cleveland and Detroit? The Mercury

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

It was the offseason. The call came from his 95-year-old father. James Arthur Haslam II, the man who started Pilot Company in 1958, had a question for his son. After decades of working side-by-side with his father, Jimmy is used to a little feedback from the man the family calls “Big Jim.”

“Do you know in the last month you’ve traded Myles Garrett and Giannis (Antetokounmpo, former Milwaukee Bucks superstar)?” the patriarch asked his son.  “Yessir, I know that,” Jimmy responded.

As Jimmy told this story in front of a gaggle of media members, his son-in-law, JW Johnson, stood beside him, quiet, arms crossed. JW only spoke briefly compared to Jimmy, but his presence at the news conference spoke louder than words. He’s the one working beside Jimmy now.

While JW is often seen with Jimmy on the sideline or in the locker room, Jimmy has historically stood alone or with Dee for this type of appearance. Kicking off the season with JW by his side was a public glimpse at the ongoing — albeit long-term — transition of power to JW and his wife, Whitney Haslam Johnson, Jimmy’s daughter.

Remember, Big Jim is 95. Jimmy and Dee, spry 72-year-olds, aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But they’re not dumb. The Browns owners understand legacy. They understand the difficulty of the professional sports business. They understand that when they do decide to hang it up — whenever that time may come — the path to the long-term success of the Cleveland Browns and Haslam Sports Group will be decided by whoever sits at the top.

Just because the public is starting to see more of JW and Whitney, whether in football settings or on stage at the April groundbreaking in Brook Park, doesn’t mean this transition — or maybe “fortification of the Haslam family business” is a better descriptor — hasn’t been long underway. Since joining the team full-time in 2018, JW and Whitney, who both have backgrounds in marketing and media, have played major roles in football decisions: bringing the NFL Draft to Cleveland in 2021, shaping the brand and designing the forthcoming stadium.

The new Huntington Bank Field, set for completion in 2029, is more than a stadium. It’s more than an entertainment district. For Northeast Ohio and Brook Park, it’s a public investment that could lead to transformational change. 

But for Jimmy and Dee, the stadium and the development around it is a baton that will one day be passed to their daughter and son-in-law — and define the Haslams for decades to come. 

For this month’s cover story (on clevelandmagazine.com), hours of interviews with the family, former players and colleagues offer a rare glimpse into the family dynamic that drives Haslam Sports Group. Despite Whitney and JW’s successful careers, few know the couple.

Our story does not set out to endorse or deride the decision to move the Browns from Cleveland, nor does it excuse or litigate missteps on or off the field.

Instead, what it attempts to do is better understand a family dynamic that is shaping not only the past, present and future of Haslam Sports Group but also of Northeast Ohio at large. 

— Dillon Stewart, Editor

Have a story idea? Tell us what we should cover at conversation@clevelandmagazine.com.

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