City Council, leaping into the tug-of-war surrounding negotations over the possible renovations of Browns Stadium and potential move to Brook Park, proposed legislation on Monday to ensure the team follows a law dating back to 1996 — the Art Modell Law — if it intends to move from Cleveland.
Ward 16 Councilman Brian Kazy explained his reasoning to the press this afternoon. The state law Kazy read aloud in Council Chamber was clearly pinpointed to Cleveland's dire bid, as it dealt with two decades ago, to convince the billionaire owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam to keep their football team playing home games on the city's lakefront. Ever since February, when reports had Haslams eyeing the site of the defunct 176-acre former Ford facility near Cleveland Hopkins and which they confirmed at the NFL owners meeting recently, a volleyball match of what ifs have plagued both Cleveland's diehard Browns fans and a City Hall pressed with the task to keep the team, and its home games, here on Lake Erie.
Last week, Jimmy Haslam confirmed that he was interested in earmarking that Brook Park site for a potential stadium build—one with a dome, a new RTA stop, a potential mixed-use village and an ocean of privately-owned parking.
City Hall, save for a few public comments, has remained politically quiet on the matter, until Kazy's announcement on Monday. (Mayor Bibb didn't give the matter a single mention in his State of the City address last Thursday but afterward said they he hoped to keep the team in Cleveland.) The Haslams have yet to respond on how they, if the legislation is passed by City Council, will respond.
Kazy, speaking on behalf of the six other councilmembers in the room, compared the political involvement in sports matters to then-Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's legislation, in 2018, to keep the Columbus Crew playing at Historic Crew Stadium.
"These are the Cleveland Browns," Kazy said. "We want to assure that the Cleveland Browns remain the Cleveland Browns. And that this is a legal team—it's not another city's team."
"Don't get me wrong: I'm not calling for the Haslams to sell the team," he added. "We're just calling for the process of state law to be followed."
The ordinance will be, Kazy said, introduced formally in Council Chamber Monday evening, then head to its Finance, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee "within the next two or three weeks."
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