By Cindi Andrews
Enquirer staff reporter

Raul Puga of DC Byers works on the concrete Thursday around a drain on the Canopy Level at Paul Brown Stadium. The Enquirer/TONY JONES

Paul Brown Stadium really is a jungle, to hear the Cincinnati Bengals describe their home in a lawsuit against Hamilton County commissioners.

The team says the riverfront stadium's club lounges are inadequately heated, the sound system is spotty, concrete is crumbling - one section of seating might even be unsafe - and one reversible escalator isn't usable at the end of games.

The bill to taxpayers to fix these and other conditions: about $15 million.

That's a different picture than the team paints in brochures and media guides of a home field the Bengals like to call The Jungle. Sales materials tout the Bengals' $455 million home as award-winning architecture and "the best setting for pro football in the country."

"We don't think there's an inherent contradiction between us being proud of the stadium and pointing up the issues that need to be addressed," team spokesman Jack Brennan said.

County officials say the team is making a federal case out of a few maintenance problems that are being fixed. The team raised its concerns about the condition of the stadium as part of its response to the county's $600 million federal lawsuit against the Bengals and the National Football League. County commissioners say team owners illegally used their monopoly power to get a new stadium out of Hamilton County in the mid-1990s.

The team denied the allegations and counterpunched that the county has failed to live up to its duties as the builder of the stadium. The Bengals said they had hoped to work out the problems but were forced to make legal claims because they were sued.

The team's most serious allegation about the stadium is that faulty construction of support columns for the seats in the north end zone led to water damage that "compromised the structural integrity."

Contractors didn't build and test the supports as they were supposed to, according to the Bengals, and the county has withheld the results of recent testing on the supports.

Assistant County Administrator Eric Stuckey flatly denied any safety risk. Some water damage to one support was fixed about a year ago at no cost to the county and an additional column was added as insurance, said Joe Feldkamp, the county's director of stadium operations.

"There is absolutely no way any of this is a structural issue," Stuckey said.

Other concerns are being addressed or already have been, county officials say. Concrete has been a problem since the stadium opened in 2000. The Bengals' lawsuit criticizes the county for taking a piecemeal approach to concrete and joint repairs, estimating that almost $5.9 million worth of work is needed now.

The county counters that its five-year, $3.5 million maintenance plan - including $500,000 worth of work that's under way - will keep the floor of the concourses and seating bowl in good shape.

Problems with the sound system - dead spots, big swings in the volume and garble - also date to the stadium's opening, the Bengals say. They would cost $400,000 to fix, according to the team.

"The sound system's terrible," agreed fan Deb Price of Mount Washington, a season-ticket holder. "You can't hear the announcer."

Price's biggest gripe is with the escalator. Paul Brown Stadium has five escalators. The long escalator on the northwest side of the stadium couldn't be used last year to carry fans down at the end of games because the small space at the bottom between the landing and the exit gates was a safety hazard.

It wasn't a big deal when the team was playing badly, Feldkamp said, because fans started trickling out long before the end of the game. The design flaw was exposed last year when the new and improved team drew larger crowds that caused a bottleneck at the end of games, Feldkamp said.

Said Price: "It is kind of annoying that we spent all that money and you can't get out of the stadium easily. It is an accident waiting to happen."

The Bengals say it would cost $4.2 million to fix the design.

The county agrees that the one escalator is a problem. But it disagrees about some other things. For example, the county says it fixed the heating problem in the lounges by adding more electricity so portable heaters can be used when needed. "It's fixed. That's done," Feldkamp said.

The biggest head-scratcher for the county is $100,000 for a "blimp chase'' that the Bengals say the county agreed to provide before construction began.

"I've been here for four years - since we opened - and nobody's ever mentioned a blimp chase," Feldkamp said.

What's a blimp chase? It's a communications setup that allows people in a blimp to talk with people on the ground. Blimps show up at some big games and take aerial pictures for TV.

The county might have to provide such a feature, Feldkamp said, "but let's use common sense. Do we really need it?"

E-mail candrews@enquirer.com