CLEVELAND — The battle over the future home of the Cleveland Browns escalated Tuesday, as the city of Cleveland took legal action to try to slow a move – or stop one altogether.
In a lawsuit filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, the city’s lawyers argue that the Browns are flouting state law. They’re asking a judge to compel the team’s owners to do one of two things: negotiate a deal with Cleveland to leave for neighboring Brook Park, or offer the team up for sale to local buyers.
The fight centers on the so-called Modell law, a state law designed to make it harder for professional sports teams to leave taxpayer-supported facilities. The law is colloquially named for former Browns’ owner Art Modell, who moved the original team to Baltimore in 1996.
Cleveland has been building toward a lawsuit since last fall, when Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam ended negotiations with Mayor Justin Bibb over renovating the city-owned stadium Downtown.
In a preemptive strike, the Browns filed a federal lawsuit in October challenging the validity of the Modell law. The team’s lawyers argue that the law is unconstitutional, vague and at odds with the NFL’s rules. The Browns also claim the law doesn’t apply to their situation, since the team would only be moving a short distance – and not until after its lease with Cleveland ends.
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The law requires owners of teams that play most of their home games in subsidized facilities to get their host city’s approval to move out. Absent that, team owners must give at least six months’ notice about an anticipated move, while offering the city or local investors a chance to buy the team.
Cleveland’s attorneys say the law clearly applies to the Browns and Haslam Sports Group.
They point out that the city has poured more than $368 million into Huntington Bank Field between construction and repairs – and that taxpayers are still subsidizing the stadium through the sin tax, a countywide tax on cigarettes and alcohol purchases.
“The Modell law is clear: if you take taxpayer money to fund your stadium, you have obligations to the community that made that investment possible,” Mark Griffin, the city’s law director, said in a news release. “The Haslam (Sports) Group’s circumvention of these requirements not only undermines the trust of Cleveland’s residents but also violates a law designed to protect all Ohioans.”
In its lawsuit, the city is asking a judge to find that the Modell law does, indeed, apply to the Browns and the Brook Park proposal. The city’s lawyers also want the court to block the Browns from accepting funding for a new suburban stadium or starting construction until Haslam Sports Group complies with the law.
The Browns have released images of a $2.4 billion enclosed stadium in Brook Park, surrounded by more than $1 billion worth of apartments, dining, hotels, offices, retail and parking. They have a deal to buy the 176-acre site, a former automotive plant property off Snow Road near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
It’s unclear whether – and how much – the Modell law will complicate those plans. The law, passed in 1996, has never been fully tested.
It was invoked in 2018 during a fight over the future of the Columbus Crew, a professional soccer team.
At the time, the team’s ownership was threatening to move the Crew to Texas. Then-Attorney General Mike DeWine and the city of Columbus filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court to enforce the Modell law. That case was still pending when an investor group led by the Haslams struck a deal to take control of the Crew and keep the team in Ohio.
Alan Weinstein, a professor emeritus of law and urban studies at Cleveland State University, called the law a “toothless tiger” in an interview with News 5 last year.
“Language like ‘opportunity to purchase a team’ doesn’t really mean very much in terms of trying to keep the Browns here,” Weinstein said at the time. “If I told you that you have an opportunity to purchase my home, and you know, you offered me a price that I was not satisfied with, I’d say ‘thanks, but no, we’re not doing the deal.’ It’s exactly the same.”
The Browns argue that they’re free of their obligations to Cleveland once their lease at the Downtown stadium expires, after the 2028 NFL season.
Cleveland sees the situation differently.
“You can’t take the money and run,” the city’s lawsuit says.
The city accuses the Browns of seeking “to abandon the lakefront stadium in Downtown Cleveland that they asked the public to build and maintain for them, hoping that another set of taxpayers will pay for them to move to a new city with a new set of promises.”
Cleveland still hasn’t directly responded to the Browns’ lawsuit in federal court. The city’s deadline to file a response is Wednesday, Jan. 15.
The sparring comes as the Haslams are lobbying state and local lawmakers to help pay for the new, enclosed stadium in Brook Park. At the same time, the city of Cleveland is forging ahead on plans to remake its Downtown lakefront, where the existing stadium sits.
Bibb has said lakefront development will happen with or without the Browns. But it’s clear the city isn’t letting go without a fight – a fight that, now, is playing out in two courts.
“The future of our lakefront and our city is brighter with the Cleveland Browns continuing to play football on the shores of Lake Erie, just as they have for generations,” Bibb said in a news release Tuesday evening.
