Mark Oprea
Councilman Brian Kazy at Council Chamber on Monday. Kazy is calling for a legal measure that would make the Browns' move to Brook Park illegal without new paperwork.
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.
In other words: If we're paying for it, you're gonna use it.
"No owner of a professional sports team that uses a tax-supported facility for most of its homes games and receives financial assistance from the state or a political subdivision thereof," the ordinance reads, "shall cease playing most of its home games at the facility and begin playing its home games elsewhere."
That is unless the Haslams enter one of two legal routes. One, make a new deal with a new city, Kazy said, "whether they want to move the team to Timbuktu or Brook Park or Lakewood or to any other state."
Or two, break up with Cleveland completely—sell the team—with a six-month notice.
"We're hoping that the latter does not happen," Kazy said. "However, this is going to ensure that the Cleveland Browns are going to be a part of the legislative process, and the Cleveland City Council is going to have to say so in that."
Mark Oprea
Six other councilmembers—including, pictured, Michael Polensek, Blaine Griffin, Kevin Bishop and Kevin Conwell—were present Monday to back Kazy up.
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."
