Forest City Cleveland is the Name the City's Newest Men's Soccer Team

Cleveland’s next soccer team will be Forest City Cleveland. (Yes, that’s FC Cleveland.)

That’s the name selected by Cleveland Pro Soccer for the MLS Next Pro men’s team tentatively scheduled to launch in 2027 following months of design drafting, focus group feedback and survey input from 3,000 fans.

The team and branding stem from Cleveland’s one-time moniker of the Forest City, a name whose origins are fuzzy but which picked up steam in the mid-1800s. A moniker best exemplified, Cleveland Pro Soccer said, in the Moses Cleaveland trees — weathered American sycamores across Northeast Ohio that have survived since the city’s founding in 1796.

And of course what’s blossomed since: the Emerald Necklace and Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

“There are few cities that have as great park systems and as great, luck greenery as Cleveland,” Noah Toumert, the executive director of Cleveland Pro Soccer’s community foundation, told Scene.

“So, to be able to represent that through not just the name for a city, but the icon connecting it to something that’s a little known part of our history?” he said. “I think people will be interested to hear about.”

Which they certainly have before. Forest City has found its way into the names of a spattering of breweries, shuffleboard bars, hotels, banks, neighborhood parks and surplus stores. From 1868 to 1872, a decade after the city earned the moniker for its lucious woodlands, Cleveland bore a baseball team bearing that leafy name.

But as to whether or not Cleveland still deserves the nickname is harder to argue.

Despite the efforts of advocacy groups and the Cleveland Tree Coalition, the city’s tree canopy coverage has been declining rapidly since the 1970s and 1980s. And although planting efforts might be stabilizing that decline, Cleveland’s still way behind its neighbors: Minneapolis’ trees cover 32 percent of the city; Milwaukee’s cover 31; and Columbus’ cover 23. Cleveland’s tree canopy, as of 2019, is about 18 percent.

“Forest City” is therefore a little more anachronistic than realistic.

“Are we still ‘Forest City’? That’s a great question,” Sara Tillie, the head of the Cleveland Tree Coalition, said. “I really think we are really trying to hold onto that title.”

Tree data is typically determined by light detection—lasers in the sky known as LiDAR—which is pricey and time-consuming. It’s why, Tillie said, Cleveland’s relying on seven-year-old tree counts.

But efforts are ongoing. Last year, the city hired a commissioner to head its new Division of Urban Forestry. And in February, the Western Reserve Land Conservancy announced a $690,000 grant to plant over 1,600 trees across the region.

“We find ourselves in a place where I do not think the name is out of reach,” Tillie said.

That’s how Toumert feels: a Forest City soccer team will only act as an optimistic push to restore what Cleveland used to be, with its leafy orchards and vast woodland. (Mostly in those heat islands: Downtown and the East Side.)

Even at the site of the stadium where Forest City will possibly play some day. Toumert said “many” trees will occupy the proposed South Gateway stadium when it’s built south of Progressive Field (if Cleveland Pro Soccer ever comes up with the tens of millions of dollars needed to buidl it). The team will play elsewhere if its not finished in 2027.

Toumert said that CPS is still working out the kinks as far as how tryouts for the team might work. The name and branding for the accompanying women’s team, set to play in the Women’s Premier Soccer League, will be announced in May, he said.

But for now, Forest City has a new soccer team. One Toumert believes will tap easily into Clevelanders’ undying support for anything with balls and jerseys. As of February, CPS has thousands of pledged season ticket holders.

“Cleveland’s the last top 20 market in the country without soccer,” Toumert said. “There’s a long history of people trying and failing to bring professional soccer teams here.”

“We just know there’s a massive desire for this,” he added. “Cleveland just needed somebody to get it across the finish line.”

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.