CLEVELAND, Ohio — The long-running standoff between the city of Cleveland and Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam is officially over.
At a joint press conference late Monday afternoon, Mayor Justin Bibb and the Haslams announced an agreement that clears the way for a new covered stadium in Brook Park — and ends months of legal and political wrangling over the team’s plan to leave the downtown lakefront.
Under the deal, the Haslams will move forward with a $2.4 billion domed stadium near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. In return, they’ve agreed to give the city $100 million to help demolish the current lakefront stadium and prepare the site for future development. The city and the Haslams will also collaborate on a new road network designed to serve both the Brook Park stadium and the nearby airport.
As part of the settlement, Cleveland will drop all pending litigation against the team and its ownership, as well as its objections to the stadium’s height and its proximity to airport flight paths.
The deal closes the books on a complex legal fight that stretched across both state and federal courts. The Browns sued the city and the state of Ohio late last year in federal court, arguing that the Modell Law — a statute enacted after Art Modell moved the original Browns to Baltimore — was unconstitutional. The law required tax-supported professional sports teams to give their host cities a chance to buy the franchise before moving.
City attorneys and the Ohio attorney general’s office had asked a federal judge last month to dismiss the Browns’ suit. The attorney general argued the case was moot because the state legislature had since rewritten the Modell Law to apply only to teams moving out of Ohio — a change included in the same state budget bill that earmarked $600 million in public funding for the new stadium. Cleveland’s lawyers, meanwhile, maintained that the law was never unconstitutional and that the team’s dispute belonged in state court, not federal court.
The city also had filed its own lawsuit in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, arguing that the Browns violated their lease at the lakefront stadium and that the old version of the Modell Law still applied because taxpayers had invested more than $500 million in the facility.
Monday’s agreement effectively ends both cases and clears the final legal hurdles to construction of the Brook Park stadium.
The Haslams have pitched the new stadium as a year-round entertainment destination and centerpiece of a larger redevelopment effort near the airport.
Details on the timeline for demolition have not been released. The Browns have said they are aiming to be in their new stadium for the start of the 2029 season.
_This is a developing story and will be updated._
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