Five months after closing its doors, the massive I-X Center near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport is reopening, with the owners of the Cleveland Browns stepping in to bridge the gap until their new stadium is ready. Haslam Sports Group has signed a three-year lease with the developers who control the 2.2 million-square-foot complex, covering roughly 530,000 square feet of event and meeting space and clearing the way for the Cleveland Auto Show, the Progressive Cleveland Boat Show and other longtime expos to return to their familiar Brook Park home.
The reopening was announced early Wednesday by I-X Center management, according to News 5 Cleveland, reversing a closure that had stood since March and effectively ended the building's 40-year run as an exhibition venue. Under the arrangement, Haslam Sports Group plans to host major consumer shows and other events at the property through 2029, the year the Browns are set to move into their new enclosed stadium roughly a mile away in Brook Park. Haslam Sports Group executives have described that stadium, formally the new Huntington Bank Field, as a 365-day-a-year venue designed to accommodate everything from large concerts to smaller gatherings, and Oak View Group will continue to run the I-X Center's event space during the interim lease.
A Bridge Built to Keep Shows in Brook Park
The lease traces back to lobbying from the trade-show industry itself. Michelle Burke, president of the Ohio Marine Trades Association, which produces the Progressive Cleveland Boat Show, urged Haslam Sports Group to create a three-year bridge that would keep shows at the I-X Center until the Brook Park stadium opens, the station's report notes. Plans to close the I-X Center first surfaced in June 2025, and when the closure actually took effect this spring, several major expos found themselves squeezed into downtown Cleveland's smaller footprint.
The Cleveland Auto Show, produced by the Greater Cleveland Automobile Dealers' Association under president Lou Vitantonio, had been facing a three-and-a-half-day run at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland after previously enjoying a 9.5-day run at the I-X Center. The Home and Garden Show fared similarly poorly, forced to downsize from ten days to three once it relocated downtown — a scheduling squeeze Hoodline previously reported was pushing other consumer events toward the Huntington Convention Center's 520,000 square feet of space as well.
What's Coming Back, and When
With the new lease in place, a full slate of familiar events is scheduled to return to the I-X Center. The Progressive Cleveland Boat Show is set for Jan. 14-17, the Home and Garden Show returns Jan. 29 through Feb. 7, and the Cleveland Auto Show is scheduled from Feb. 26 to March 7. The Cleveland Home and Remodeling Expo follows March 19-21, while the Cleveland Christmas Connection is set for Nov. 20-22 and the Progressive Outdoor Fall RV Fest will use the I-X Center parking lot Sept. 10-13.
Marketplace Events, chaired by Tom Baugh, produces the Home Show, the Cleveland Home and Remodeling Expo and the Cleveland Christmas Connection as part of a North American portfolio of more than 130 shows, per the station's account. Scott McGorty, the I-X Center's marketing manager, said the reopening will welcome thousands of Northeast Ohioans who have loved the I-X Center for more than 40 years — a nod to the venue's history dating back to its origins as the Cleveland Bomber Plant, which manufactured B-29 Superfortress components before later producing military vehicles as the Cleveland Tank Plant until 1972 and reopening as an exposition hall in 1985, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
Industrial Ambitions Still Loom Over the Site
Even as the shows return, the I-X Center's developers, Industrial Realty Group and Industrial Commercial Properties, are keeping their eyes on a bigger prize. The two firms hold a long-term lease on the complex and control the site for up to 13 more years, into 2039, with the ability to sublease space — an arrangement that let them strike the deal with Haslam Sports Group in the first place. Tom McNair, the city's chief of integrated development, said operating shows would be acceptable as long as they do not interfere with attracting high-quality industrial tenants, per the station's reporting.
That industrial ambition is not hypothetical. An unidentified manufacturer is reportedly considering the I-X Center and could bring 700 jobs and $72 million in annual payroll to Cleveland, though it would initially need 500,000 square feet of space, the outlet reports. City officials see the reopening as preserving ownership's flexibility to accommodate that kind of future manufacturing user even while the building hosts consumer expos in the meantime. Separately, Cleveland Magazine has reported that Amazon and other industrial developers evaluated leasing portions of the I-X Center and surrounding airport parcels for logistics operations, illustrating the competing pressures on the airport-adjacent land.
Untangling the Cleveland–Brook Park Tax Dispute
The reopening also arrives against the backdrop of a long municipal fight over who benefits financially from the site. Cleveland and Brook Park revised their tax-sharing settlement this year, ending nine years of litigation, according to Publiusly. The revised settlement gave Cleveland all municipal tax revenues from the I-X Center, while Cleveland will make guaranteed cash payments to Brook Park for 33 years and transfer 34 acres of former residential land to the suburb. Brook Park City Council approved the revised settlement in June, and Cleveland City Council followed in mid-July.
Cleveland City Council had already authorized the Bibb administration to extend the developers' lease term to 49 years, giving Industrial Realty Group and Industrial Commercial Properties a much longer runway to plan the site's future beyond the current 2039 expiration, as Signal Cleveland has reported. The city owns the I-X Center outright, even as the developers control its day-to-day operations and leasing decisions.
Stadium Financing Still an Open Question
The reopening deal is closely tied to the fortunes of the Browns' new stadium, which is expected to cost $2.6 billion and includes roughly $1.75 billion from private sources alongside a $600 million state grant. Brook Park may also commit $245 million to the project, though that remains a potential commitment rather than a finalized one. Haslam Sports Group broke ground on the 67,500-seat enclosed stadium on April 30, and the project is slated to open for the 2029 NFL season, according to the Washington Times.
The state's $600 million pledge has hit turbulence, however. Ohio lawmakers authorized the funding in June 2025, but the allocation was frozen in 2026 amid a class-action lawsuit challenging the state's use of unclaimed funds for sports facilities. Governor Mike DeWine has indicated that if that funding mechanism fails in court, lawmakers could reconsider a tax on sports gaming operators to fulfill the state's commitment. It remains unclear how that litigation, or the broader legal challenges to the Browns' move under Ohio's Art Modell law that Hoodline has previously reported, might affect the 2029 timeline.
For now, the I-X Center's reopening offers a measure of stability for the trade-show producers and vendors who built decades of business around the Brook Park venue. Whether that stability lasts beyond 2029, when Haslam Sports Group's lease runs out and the developers' industrial ambitions could finally take precedence, is a question the city and its development partners have yet to answer publicly.
