An editor at The Plain Dealer once explained that the reason the Cleveland Browns get so much page-one coverage on Monday mornings after a game is because people care more about the team than they do about the welfare of the city or the competence of the officials governing it.
Sports are an escape from reality — and especially here, where government balances precariously between incompetence and corruption. That is why we have overlooked so much when it comes to the Browns that we lose sight of what a bad story they too have been on and off the field.
The announcement last week that the Browns are stepping forward to help in the century-old quest to develop the lakefront came as curious and alarming news. Most alarming is the presence of the ubiquitous lawyer Fred Nance, whose every public appearance causes his own law partners to shudder and concerned citizens to fear that the public treasury is again at risk.
It’s hard to forget that Nance counseled City Hall in the days of Mayor Mike White and his marauding best man, Nate Gray, who is serving so much time in jail for public corruption that he will be eligible for social security by the time he gets out.
Nance handled initial negotiations on the convention center, an unbid project shrouded in enough secrecy to ensure that countless years will pass before we know what happened to our tax dollars.
Nance also was involved with the medical mart, where early returns have it trailing expectations in the same fashion as the celebrated Euclid Corridor, a $200 million rejuvenation project that rendered the avenue lifeless and barren.
The irony here is that Nance also played a key role in negotiating the return of the National Football League to Cleveland and the building of a new stadium. Faced with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the lakefront, a meddling Mike White blew it by building the new Browns Stadium — used fewer than a dozen times a year — on one of the most valuable chunks of public land in North America.
Last year Roldo Bartimole, for decades the still-small voice of the community, and one of few who not only follows the business side of such matters but understands the devastating significance of the figures, revealed the following in his online report Cleveland Leader:
The current debt for the stadium, including financing, is $184 million in public money. In addition, the city pays the Browns $850,000 a year until 2020 out of its general fund as a sort of thank-you for doing business here; that sum rises annually until it reaches $7.5 million in 2025.
The cost of the stadium is said to be around $300 million, but the smart money says we’ll never really know.
As for the Browns? They take all the money made from ticket and loge sales, and pay only $250,000 a year in rent for the stadium.
Nance negotiated this deal on behalf of the city. Now he is general counsel for the Browns.
The past is littered with a myriad of failed plans for the lakefront and botched opportunities scuttled by paltry politics and sanguine self-interest, two house specialties in these parts.
The Browns have said they will not invest in lakefront development, nor will owner Randy Lerner, or apparently anyone else — and this is the crux of the problem. If lakefront land is so valuable, why have private investors declined to flock to our shores? One good reason is that business does not trust local government.
Mayor Frank Jackson lost the best lakefront tenant he had when he failed to be responsive to Eaton Corporation, which moved its headquarters to Chagrin Highlands after knocking heads with City Hall.
Another Cleveland businessman invested millions on a lakefront project in accordance with Mayor Jane Campbell’s development plan. When Jackson secretly discarded his predecessor’s three-year-old plan, the project floundered.
In essence, the Browns’ new proposal is a front for Nance. It gives him the imprimatur to take advantage of a feckless and aimless mayor who desperately wants to do something with the lakefront but has neither the capability nor capacity to do so. It is also probable that Nance is hustling some bond work for his law firm, the estimable Squire, Sanders & Dempsey.
The highly touted $267 million Wolstein East Bank project, which sits on land at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, exemplifies the city’s plight. There is so much public money leveraged into this development that it might as well be a government venture.
It is likely that any waterfront project, no matter how attractive, will be financed the same way. And no one would be better at it than Nance. The problem is that public money has a way of becoming a ransom for bad government.
Meanwhile, this all brings up the issue of the Lerner family and its legacy with the team. It is wise to remember that Al Lerner was an accomplice in moving the Browns to Baltimore, and there will always be lingering suspicion over why the NFL awarded him the new franchise when seemingly more attractive bidders — including Tribe savior Dick Jacobs — also wanted in.
It was also Al Lerner who greenmailed and trashed Ameritrust, one of the city’s oldest banks.
And then there is Randy Lerner, with his record of failure and indifference in his efforts to right the franchise. He turned a once-hallowed team into a perennial loser. You would think that he might consider investing in the lakefront, given his cash flow of public money.
It is likely that The Plain Dealer article heralding the Browns’ development plans was designed by the club to gauge reaction to such an idea. There is something sad in seeing Browns President Mike Holmgren — by all accounts a competent and dedicated man — fronting for Fred Nance.
What Holmgren can do best for Cleveland is produce a team that wins football games. The coach doesn’t need Randy Lerner and Frank Jackson in the same backfield, running yet another Fred Nance North Coast offense.
Michael D. Roberts is a former Plain Dealer city editor and editor of Cleveland Magazine. He has been writing about the city for nearly 50 years.
This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2011.
Whew….Wow…THAT was interesting…
The men who destroyed Cleveland sports and forced at least a 1% additional tax on the county:
Tim Hagan, Mike White, Fred Nance
Commissioner Hagan, along with Mayor White moved the Indians into their own ballpark, not taking into consideration Modell was losing the only and MAJOR tenant at the old Municipal Stadium. Going back to the 1960’s, Modell had an agreement with the city of Cleveland that his Browns Stadium Corp. would take care of all needs that the Municipal Stadium needed. The rent income from the Indians was used to maintain and fix the 50+ yr old stadium. Once the Indians moved, Modell went to Hagan and White and asked for $130 million to do a major fix up of the stadium since there was no more rent money. Both Hagan and White said “no”.
The end result? Modell moves the Browns. Then….Nance (the great deal maker) ends up agreeing with the NFL to have the county build a $300 million new stadium in order to get a new faux Browns (in name only) team. Thats $170 million MORE than what Modell was asking for.
I can see why the Browns hired Nance, at least for a short time. Payback for a sweet deal. Give the dummy a reward for helping the opposition.
Actually if you realy think about it, after reading this article, the imcompetence of Nance at negotiations is a good example of the evils of racial quota hiring.
Based on Nance’s record in negotiations, I’d love to be pitted against him in a game of Texas Hold’em. Easy pickn’s.
I always get worried when I see Nance’s name attached to any major development proposal. It seems like there’s a likelihood it will be a good deal for Nance and a bad deal for the rest of us. Hasn’t Nance’s firm done bond work on a LOT of these projects? Why aren’t they barred from profiting from any project he negotiated?
If one reviews the biggest publicly-financed boondoggles of the past two decades, essentially the same group of names arises: (Pick your greedy and/or malleable elected officials), Nance, Roman, Miller/Ratner, Roche…A Cavalcade of Stars…The pack of goniffs who learned the art of looting the public treasury during The White Administration are the same guys still hijacking the Ohio Constitution in increasingly brazen attempts to shake loose public financing to promote the interests of private developers…whether the project succeed or not. Worse, Cleveland’s “civic leaders” are well aware of the outrage, and those who are not directly complicit are either too disengaged or too queasy to do anything about it.
You can “reform” government all you want; until these guys are exposed to the light and run out of town, the only “economic development” we can expect to see is development of the economies of this handful of latter-day robber barons…
Re: “Nance also was involved with the medical mart, where early returns have it trailing expectations in the same fashion as the celebrated Euclid Corridor, a $200 million rejuvenation project that rendered the avenue lifeless and barren.”
Really, how can Michael Roberts’ credibility be taken seriously when he so recklessly sputters off such groundless, clueless bits of non-facts in a single sentence?
Had he never actually ventured to downtown Cleveland before the Euclid project began, with a barren six lanes of cracked asphalt flanked by crumbling sidewalks, a cobweb of overhanging wires connected to rotted utility poles plied with a Mensa puzzle of bus-route signs and conflicting traffic directives, not to mention an already alarming infection of empty storefronts?
Did he not bother to read the REAL criteria for the corridor’s success, instead lazily relying on his own absurd expectation that Public Square should become Times Square in two years?
Does he not bother to read the actual news stories attesting to the success of the Euclid Corridor, how it nearly doubled transit ridership along Euclid and sparked millions of dollars of new development — yes, in addition to the pre-existing construction plans worth tens of billions of dollars?
As for Med Mart, uh, maybe we should wait until it actually opens, or at least get the foundation finished, or at least get a final formal tally of vendors, or at least he should be able to explain how it’s of no small matter that it’s still way ahead of competing projects in Nashville and New York, before denouncing it as a such a failure.
Scene magazine deserves better than one those typical post-story Cleveland bashing tirades clogging the news blogesphere.
Sorry, that above comment should read “tens of MILLIONS of dollars.
In response to Michael D. Roberts piece on Fred Nance and the Browns. It’s amazing to me that someone other than me remembers Cleveland history or better put the Cleveland debacles of the past. The powerful continue to use C-Town money to enrich themselves and screw city at the time. I thought I was the only one who remembered Al Lerner’s greenmail of Cleveland”s oldest and most venerable bank. He then took the cash to Buffalo before coming back to buy the Browns for tax purposes not because he cared a whit about the Browns or Cleveland for that matter. It was just business.
(The federal government at congress’ insistence allows owners of major league teams to depreciate their purchase price over a very short time but that’s another story about how congress has ruined major league sports) I’m certain Squires has a game plan allowing for further pillage while the ignoramus’s in city hall continue to snooze while waiting for the next bag man to appear and the fans wait for the next disappointing, rebuilding year.
Fred Nance, the face of everything that is wrong with the city of Clevelnad, and Cuyahoga County. This pompous jackass always has his hands in something that will make him and his firm money, and to hell with the rest of us. It must be nice to continually be rewarded for failure.