Howard Milstein, the New York-based real estate developer and part-owner of the New York Islanders hockey franchise, has lost his bid to purchase the Cleveland Browns football team.

Instead of opting to accept Milstein's all-cash offer of $450 million, the National Football League owners on Tuesday chose Al Lerner, a Brooklyn-born credit card magnate, as the new owner of the team.

Lerner will reportedly pay $530 million for the franchise, with $54 million of that total being put toward the cost of building a new stadium for the team.

"I thought our bid could survive a gap of maybe $1 million per team, but not one this wide," Milstein said after the owners' decision was announced.

"Our bid was the correct bid for the value we saw. Others may have seen other value. We thought it was prudent."

Besides Milstein, Lerner beat out another bidder with local roots, Cablevision's Charles Dolan, and his brother, Cleveland-based attorney Lawrence Dolan.

In the days just before the Lerner bid was accepted, the Dolans had upped their bid to $500 million. Seven teams, including the Jets, Giants and Baltimore Ravens were all said to be in support of the Dolan bid.

With the Cleveland Browns bid behind him, several sources said Milstein would likely now turn his attention to the Islanders full time.

This could, however, prove to be a mixed blessing for lawmakers in Nassau.

For the past several months, the Islanders owners, New York Sports Ventures, has been negotiating with the county over the development of a new facility for the team to play in.

The problem is, sources within the Gulotta administration now say that money is so tight in Nassau that there isn't likely to be any funding for a new coliseum included in the county budget to be proposed next week.