CINCINNATI — Hamilton County may shuffle its lineup of lawyers who handle riverfront development matters, including lease negotiations with the Cincinnati Bengals and Reds.
It's a monumental shift for the county, which has mainly relied on one lawyer, Tom Gabelman, for matters involving The Banks riverfront project.
The item was added to the commissioners' agenda just minutes ahead of their 10 a.m. Thursday meeting, where they are set to vote on resolutions allowing the county to hire new lawyers.
Commissioners will vote on whether to hire law firm Dinsmore & Shohl to help county prosecutors negotiate a new lease with the Bengals and develop The Banks, and the Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease firm on matters pertaining to the Reds and Great American Ballpark, according to county resolutions.
They would likely replace Gabelman, whose two law firms have billed the county an average of $1 million annually since 2000.
Critics of the stalled development at The Banks have blamed Gabelman, who they say became the unofficial leader after the Joint Banks Steering Committee stopped meeting in 2019.
“It was a power vacuum,” said Chris Bortz, a former Cincinnati Councilman who worked extensively on The Banks during a 6-year period that began in 2005. “And so, the county deferred to their attorney, who had been involved since the beginning.”
More public money flowed to Gabelman’s current firm, Frost Brown Todd, annually in recent years than the county paid for the salaries of many top leaders, including the administrator, prosecutor, and sheriff combined.
New lawyers would come in at a critical time for the county. The Bengals' lease expires in 2026, and the team has until June to decide if it wants to extend it.
In January, the county and the Bengals accused each other of violating their lease agreement for Paycor Stadium, in a series of letters and emails obtained by the WCPO 9 I-Team.
“The county has not performed its obligations under the lease,” Bengals Vice President Troy Blackburn wrote to Hamilton County Administrator Jeff Aluotto on January 9. “With the stadium entering its final lease year, the situation stands very much at a precipice, and we hope progress can be made so the stadium remains an asset for the community.”
WCPO 9 I-Team has been reporting on Gabelman’s legal bills since 2016. Since 2000, the two law firms where Gabelman has worked have billed the county more than $25 million.
In a 2022 interview, former Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley questioned why the county was spending so much at Gabelman’s law firm to negotiate with the Cincinnati Bengals, when the city used its staff attorneys to negotiate a stadium deal with FC Cincinnati in 2018.
“We didn’t pay millions of dollars to outside legal firms to negotiate that deal,” Cranley said in 2022.
The commissioners are ultimately in charge of how much the county spends on outside attorneys. Commissioners voted in 2016 to cap the fees it pays to Gabelman’s firm at $575,000. But they agreed in most years since then to exceed that limit and pay even more in legal bills.
During an interview with WCPO in 2019, Gabelman toured The Banks, pointing out the drastic improvements over the years. He helped develop Great American Ball Park, negotiate leases with the Cincinnati Bengals and General Electric, and bring life to The Banks.
“This was a mud pit. There was a gulf between the ballpark and the Freedom Center. There was nothing,” Gabelman said in 2019. “Right now, it’s one of the largest urban redevelopment projects in the country.”
But criticism of stalled developments at The Banks intensified this year, as business leaders such as FC Cincinnati co-CEO Jeff Berding pushed to build a new arena to replace the aging Heritage Bank Center.
"The Banks is a disappointment," Berding told a Cincinnati Rotary Club roundtable on Jan. 9. "The Banks Working Group, which is the group we created when I was on council with the city and the county, hasn't really done its job that well. It's run out of energy."
The Dinsmore lawyers who are proposed to work with the Bengals and The Banks are partners George Vincent, Marty Dunn, Richard Tranter, and Charlie Baverman.
Vorys partner Kristin Woeste would lead the county's work with the Reds.
The resolutions do not specify how much the new law firms will be paid.
The lawyers will work with county prosecutors and David Abrams, of New York-based Inner Circle Sports, who signed a contract with Hamilton County in October 2023.
Abrams, an expert on stadium negotiation, is being paid $25,000 per month on retainer, with an additional fee of up to $450,000 possible — if his advice leads to a new lease with the Cincinnati Bengals.
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