Bringing a Browns training camp to Canton is among the more interesting brainstorms as Hall of Fame Village keeps growing. Hall of Fame President David Baker and the Haslams have discussed a growing role for the Browns in Canton.

CANTON Pro Football Hall of Fame Village will be bigger than you think.

At least, it will be bigger than I thought prior to joining a late-week huddle with key people at the museum-turning-wonderland.

The Village is rising like Atlantis a mile from where the NFL champion Canton Bulldogs once played along Meyers Lake.

The key people wore the look of magical elevator men ready to receive passengers, greeting each with, "Going up!" Their shared, joyous overtone: "Can't tell you where the top floor is; sky's the limit."

They talked of the best little stadium in the USA, a hotel grander than any of the palaces built downtown when Canton headed into its mid-20th Century heyday, a jewel of an indoor arena, magnetic shops and restaurants, "the world's best sports bar," and football fields as far as the eye can see.

It had escaped me that the Village will include a water park. Master developer Stuart Lichter lit up like a 12-year-old halfway down a tall slide when he talked about it.

"It's football-themed," he said, "and it's cool. It will be indoors, in use year-round. It'll be the coolest water park in the country."

It was clear more than two years ago that the Village was going to be something new and pretty big. From there, people from the Hall of Fame and from Lichter's company, Industrial Realty Group, viewed it as having planted a gigantic seed from which even bigger things will grow.

Steve Strawbridge, the overseer representing the Hall of Fame's interests, drew out the "think-big" mantra:

"In every single meeting we have," he said, "people that come in here want to add or do something else to be a part of it. We've seen everything grow, and we want to continue to grow.

"It's big to make sure that we're ready for what's next, and we're ready to adapt."

The Village would be more than willing to adapt to playing host to Cleveland Browns training camp. Much would have to be arranged, but on so many levels, Browns camp in the Village would be a natural.

It is worth noting that Browns owner Jimmy Haslam (his wife, Dee, is co-owner) became a member of the Hall of Fame's Board of Directors within the last couple of years.

"Both Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell prevailed on me to get to know Jimmy," Hall of Fame President David Baker told us. "Jimmy and Dee have been coming down here recently a lot, and our relationship with the Browns has gotten better than ever before.

"I think we've had some discussions about potentially having their training camp here some day, about having the (intrasquad scrimmage) here some day, and about playing in the Hall of Fame Game, which hasn't happened in a while (last Browns appearance: 1999).

"We've also talked a little about collaborating not just on the draft but on the centennial."

Baker said the Hall has developed a good relationship with the Haslams and their chief financial officer, David Jenkins.

The Village could help attract the 2020 NFL Draft to Canton. Strawbridge represented the Hall at last month's draft in Philadelphia.

Strawbridge, who grew up in Philadelphia, praised his native city for being an excellent host, but the whole time he was there, his eye was on the "going up" button.

"You could really see how great a draft could be in Canton," he said. "You could imagine that what we could do here could blow any of these other cities away."

The headliner in all of this for Browns fans would be a training camp in the Village. People might come from miles around to see Danny Shelton on a water slide.

The water park, incidentally, wasn't part of the original Village plan. It grew out of the goal of creating a destination for kids, adults and corporations.

"We view this as creating a Disney-like entity," Lichter said. "In many ways it's better than Disney. With what we're building, physically, we can never put through the number of people a Disney puts through. But the bulk of the people that go to Disney go because their kids want to go.

"Think about another resort destination that is basically 'our competition in the future' ... Branson, Missouri. Branson is the reverse of Disney. Kids don't want to go. Adults want to go. This will be the only resort place in the country where the kids want to go, where the adults want to go, and the corporations want to go."

The Village is doing its own take on "NFL Experience," one of the big Super Bowl-week attractions in host cities. Kids and adults simulate drills and play interactive games.

Whereas the "NFL Experience" leaves town when the Super Bowl does, the Village is putting up a permanent, indoor "Hall of Fame Experience."

"When we were planning the Hall of Fame Experience," Lichter said, "we looked at the site size. We weighed our desire to attract all three markets (kids, adults, corporations). We looked at making this a winter-and-summer, weekday-and-weekends entity.

"When we thought through all those things, what we're creating is really national, but you also get more people coming here from your closer circle. The water park is something people can come back to."

Some people might never leave, so to speak. The Village people have discussed building a mausoleum Hall of Fame members may choose as their "final resting place."

More Hall of Famers will be in Canton for more of the year than ever before, in many cases hired to mingle, in some cases living in what is to be called Legends Landing.

Ideas to add to the Village include a chapel (first conceived, to our knowledge, by a wonderful fellow, Rev. Richard N. Davis).

"The biggest thing is to make sure we listen to everybody," Strawbridge said. "It might not happen that day, but we certainly listen."

Early projections suggest the Village will attract one million to 1.3 million people in the first full year after it is complete. The numbers could swell as components are added or tweaked.

The museum that went up in the 1960s remains the founder of the feast.

Partly to accommodate heavier traffic in the museum, offices will be moved to another building, and new public displays will replace them.

Don't be surprised to hear about more developments.

"This will have broader appeal than any other resort destination," Lichter said. "We really believe that."

Reach Steve at 330-580-8347 or

steve.doerschuk@cantonrep.com

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