Our weekly roundup of interesting happenings, minor happenings, stuff you missed, stuff we missed, and assorted fun.
The impending name change is not the only major news on deck for the Cleveland Indians, it appears.
The rumor mill has been churning the last three months with whispers that something was afoot with ownership, specifically that the Dolans were in the process of bringing on a new minority owner.
John Sherman, who was the team’s minority owner for three years, decamped with his millions to Kansas City when he bought the Royals in 2019. His share (20%-30%, according to reports) has remained in escrow since.
In losing Sherman, the Indians not only lost an influx of cash that helped boost payroll, but also, according to reports, lost out on the man who they had reached an agreement with to eventually become majority owner of the team.
The Indians got hit doubly with the timing, with Sherman’s departure taking money out the door right before the pandemic cratered MLB franchises’ bottom lines. Payroll, as you might have noticed, has since been slashed, gutted, etc.
As Terry Pluto wrote last October, what the Dolans really need to stem the tide of cost-cutting is another Sherman:
That would be someone with big bucks who is respected by the baseball side of the operation and fits with the Dolans’ low-key ownership style.The Dolans have owned the Tribe for 20 years. No matter how successful the product has been on the field, they are consistently criticized by the media and fan base for lower payrolls.
This financial storm has to really rock the boat of ownership. A lot of teams will be making major payroll cuts heading into 2021, but that doesn’t make the situation any easier for the Tribe.
It seems they might have found that person, or group.
As the rumor mill continues to pick up steam, The Athletic’s Zack Meisel told WKNR’s Aaron Goldhammer yesterday that anyone interested in updates on ownership should keep an eye on The Athletic next week.
That would be during MLB’s All Star break, which is as good a time as any to drop some major news.
And ownership might not be the only impending announcement.
The Indians’ lease at Progressive Field is up in 2023. The team and local officials have been in talks for more than a year on an extension deal, and WKYC’s Mark Naymik in early June reported that talks were far along and that an announcement could be made soon. The lease is technically with the Gateway Economic Development Board, which operates Progressive Field, but with the sin tax well that funded the stadium’s original construction and ongoing capital improvements dry, it’s the county, city and possibly the state that would be involved in drumming up a capital stack to fund upgrades.
The impending end of a lease at publicly-owned stadiums, after all, is when teams have the most leverage to negotiate for hefty taxpayer-funded improvements, what with the implicit threat that if they don’t get what they want they can always look down the road to another city that will give them what they want.
Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish has been sounding that dumbass alarm in 2021, telling WEWS Channel 5:
“People love the Indians, people love baseball, and we want to keep baseball alive and thriving in northeast Ohio. The bars are filled, the restaurants are filled and the Indians have been very successful as a franchise, getting to the playoffs regularly and you know that fills hotel rooms.“It’s critical we extend the lease. That’s the way we keep the team in Cleveland is through the lease, the same way that we did with the Cavaliers. Talks are ongoing, they’ve been ongoing, I’m optimistic, but who knows.”
The absolute gall.
He’s also said, much to the dismay of those who don’t believe in publicly-financed stadium upgrades, that the deal made with the Cavs for upgrades at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, which will cost Northeast Ohio taxpayers more than $160 million after interest and which won’t be paid off in full until 2034, is the sort of deal he’d hope to make with the Indians.
As Scene lamented in February 2020:
With the Q Deal in the rearview, the county, alongside Gateway Development Corp., is now hunting for public subsidies to help pay for future renovations at Progressive Field, which the Indians can be counted upon to demand as part of negotiations when their lease expires in 2023. The Cavs got $70 million (what will amount to $160 million or more with interest payments) for a measly seven-year lease extension, the Indians might remember. We should get the same deal!Well, a source told Scene the framework of a lease extension deal has been reached.WKYC’s Mark Naymik reported that Gateway’s Board Chairman Ken Silliman approached JobsOhio for help — and was turned down — and had not ruled out the possibility of requesting an allocation from the state of Ohio’s two-year capital budget.
And, with Armond Budish and Ken Silliman dotting Frank Jackson’s spring and early summer public calendar with a frequency that isn’t anywhere near normal, and with Paul Dolan also appearing on Jackson’s call sheet and even visiting City Hall in person last week, it appears we’re about to see a Q Deal-type agreement to open the public coffers for the Indians. (The Gateway Economic Development Board, for what it’s worth, hasn’t had a single official public board meeting all year, but told Scene this week one will happen “very soon.”
(If anyone wondered why Budish reversed course last month from his 2015 statement that the county, whose bond rating was downgraded immediately after it signed up to finance the Q Deal, had “very little capacity to take on new projects for around a decade or more” and suddenly said that the county could actually take on $1 billion in additional debt… well, a possible deal with the Indians to finance upgrades would seem to make sense even if you factor in continuing talks about building a new county jail that could come with a $500 million pricetag.)
Who knows whether next week’s Athletic story will cover an announcement on a new minority owner, a lease extension with upgrades, or both. But after the Q debacle, with a mayor on his way out the door after four terms and a county executive with negative chances of being elected to a third term, it’d be wholly dispiriting but not surprising for the region’s leaders to once again gather without public input to mortgage Cleveland’s future for a professional sports franchise.
As Scene wrote recently on the topic of the Cleveland pro sports team alliance for equality:
If “the social and economic disparity in our community reveals some ugly truths,” as Koby Altman said in the launch of the CL3 Alliance, some of those ugly truths can be found on the doorsteps of Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, FirstEnergy Stadium and Progressive Field.
Here’s to hoping Jackson and Budish prove us wrong.
– Speaking of Jackson, Ideastream Public Media’s Nick Castele is debuting a podcast on the race to succeed him. Be sure to subscribe to this vital coverage of this vital election.
– It hasn’t been a good summer for suburban police chiefs. Sheffield Lake’s police chief abruptly resigned this month after leaving a KKK sign on the desk of a Black officer, and in Kirtland, officials have terminated the police chief for “habitual drunkenness” and other infractions.
Among the charges against Nosse are consuming alcohol before driving a city-issued motor vehicle on April 13 and 14 and operating the vehicle with an open container.– Digit WidgetNosse is also charged with “unbecoming conduct,” stemming from an incident from April 13-14 at a subordinate’s home while driving the city-issued vehicle. The letter said evidence shows Nosse making “frequent use of vulgar hand gestures, vulgar language, verbal abuse (yelling, providing mean-spirited comments), sexual comments, gender comments, LGBTQ comments, and racial comments are all unbecoming conduct.”
The letter goes on to state Nosse is charged with immoral conduct in regards to the use of his phone and a sergeant’s phone. Additionally, Nosse is accused of destroying what may have been a public record, Potter said.
$443 million — Amount Dan Gilbert lowered his taxes between 2005 and 2018 because of his stake in the Cavs, according to a lengthy ProPublica story that seems appropriate reading for this week.
3 — Number of Cuyahoga County jail officers who have been arrested in the last nine days.
$89 million — Total spent by the state of Ohio on contractors to shore up Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services as it tried to deal with unemployment fraud during the pandemic.
15% — Total of Holmes County, OH, residents who have received at least one dose of their Covid vaccine. It’s the lowest rate in the state.
– What’s Scene dining editor Doug Trattner eating this week?
– Vintage photo of the week:
– New local music of the week: “Losin'” by the Buffalo Ryders
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 13, 2021.